"If you like to put it that way--but she doesn"t mind--she"s too fond of me to mind how much I spend ... Lallie----" She hated to hear that name, because once she had loved it.
She closed her eyes for a moment with a little sick shudder.
"Are you faint?" he asked anxiously. "I suppose it is warm in here.
Take your coat off! Jove! that"s a fine coat----" He ran an appreciative hand down the soft fur sleeve; a sudden suspicion crept into his eyes. "Who gave you that?" he asked sharply. "Not Mellowes----?"
"No--at least...." She could not go on. Micky had given it to her, she knew, but she would have bitten her tongue through rather than have told this man.
It had been Micky all the time--Micky....
She thrust the thought of him from her; she did not want to think of him now. There would be plenty of time later on; plenty of time when she had shaken off the last rag of the past.
"It cost a pretty penny, whoever bought it," he said sulkily. "What else has he given you? If you can take presents from him you can"t refuse to let me see you sometimes, and after all--you did love me once.... Esther, do you remember the way you cried that last day?"
"Yes," she said mechanically, "I remember; I remember everything."
"You loved me well enough then," he reminded her moodily. "You didn"t behave like an iceberg then, Lallie, and I"m not really changed; I"m the same man I was--I care for you just as much----"
"You"re married!" she said.
She felt as if she had so much time mapped out before her during which she must put up with this man"s society; as if each moment were another inch torn in the rags of disillusionment which had got to be destroyed thoroughly before she could ever hope to gather up the broken threads of her life again.
He laughed at her reminder.
"I"m not the only married man who sometimes forgets that he is no longer a bachelor," he said detestably.
He laid an arm familiarly along the back of her chair. He touched her chin with his fingers.
She moved back, the hot blood rushing riotously over her face. She was white no longer; she looked like a marble Galatea suddenly brought to life.
Raymond Ashton laughed, well pleased. He was confident that he had not lost his power over her. For the moment his appalling vanity blinded him to the fact that it was not love in her eyes, but scorn.
"What are you thinking, Lallie?" he asked her.
She sat very straight and stiff in her chair.
"I am thinking," she said, "how impossible it seems that I can ever have thought that I cared for you." Her voice was low but very clear, and he heard each word distinctly. "I am thinking that you are the most contemptible thing I have ever met in my life--I am thinking how sorry I am for the woman who is your wife."
She pushed back her chair and rose.
"Would you like to hear any more of my thoughts?" she asked.
Ashton had risen too; there was a look of bewildered amazement in his face; he tried to laugh. Even now he thought she was joking.
"Lallie--" he said hoa.r.s.ely. He half held his hand to her. "Lallie--"
he said again--but the cold contempt of her face struck the appeal from her lips.
He drew himself up with a poor attempt at dignity.
"So virtue is to be the order of the day, is it?" he said sneeringly.
"Very well----" His eyes flamed as they rested on her face. "It makes one wonder why you are here--in Paris--alone!" he said insultingly--"If you are alone."
There was a little point of silence. For a moment Esther scanned his handsome face as if she were trying to remember what it was she had ever loved in him--his eyes!--but they were so cruel and insolent--his lips ... she shuddered, realising that in all her life she could never undo the memory of his kisses--then she pulled herself together with a great effort and turned away.
He followed. His amazement had gone now--he was merely furiously angry--his face was crimson--he caught her arm in a grip that hurt.
"My G.o.d, you"re not going like this," he said furiously. "It"s only a few weeks ago that you were crying round my neck and begging me not to throw you over. Oh, that hurts, does it?" he said as she winced. "I dare say you"d like all that wiped out and forgotten. But I"ve got a few letters to remember you by--a few letters that would hardly make pleasant reading for the next man who is fool enough to waste his time on you--and I promise you I"ll send them along if it"s Mellowes or any other man----"
She raised triumphant eyes to his face.
"He wouldn"t read them," she said pa.s.sionately. "Send them if you like; but he wouldn"t read them----" She was not conscious of the admission in her words--she only knew that the knowledge that Micky was there somewhere in the background gave her the strength to defy Ashton.
She saw the sudden fury that filled his eyes.
"Then--then you admit that it"s Mellowes," he stammered. "That it"s he who has taken my place--who has cut me out----" His voice changed to a sort of threat.
"I might have know what he meant to do. I might have guessed. Wait till I see him--wait till I get back to London."
Esther smiled--a little smile of security and confidence.
"There is no need to wait," she said quietly. "Mr. Mellowes is here in Paris with me, if you wish to see him."
CHAPTER x.x.xI
Ashton echoed Esther"s words hoa.r.s.ely.
"Here! With you! in Paris!... Micky----"
A wave of bitterest jealousy surged through him. He fell back a step, struck dumb by the force of his emotions, and Esther fled away from him down the street.
She seemed to have awakened all at once to her true position. She was alone, with only a few shillings in her pocket and in a strange city.
She was tired to death. She felt as if her limbs would give way beneath her. The driver of a fiacre looked at her and drew his horse to the kerb.
Esther nodded; she threw her suit-case on to the seat and clambered in after it.
But where to go? The old blinding fear of her loneliness rushed back.
Where could she go?
Then she suddenly remembered the hotel from which Micky had written to her. She would go there. It would be somewhere at least to sleep and rest.
It was only a little drive to the hotel; she wished it had been longer.
A commissionaire came forward, and said something in French. She looked up at him, but his face seemed all indistinct and unreal. She tried to answer, but her own voice sounded as if it were miles away.