Читать книгу: «Lucinda», страница 13

“There was the greatest difficulty in stopping him, I honestly assure you. But the war came, you know, and it was his duty – ”

“His duty! Oh, my Lord, his duty!” He positively groaned at the point of view. “I give you my word, if he had come after me, I would have never returned his fire. I would have bared my breast – so!” A rapid motion of his hands made as though to tear the clothes from his chest; it was a very dramatic gesture. “But when he didn’t come – pooh!”

“He was fighting for his country,” I suggested mildly.

“And even you might have taken up the quarrel with great propriety,” he said gravely.

“I apologize for not having shot you. Try not to be such an ass, Arsenio.”

“You and he can sit down under such an affront as I put on you and your family, and shelter yourselves under duty. Duty! But up go your noses and down go your lips when I, adoring the adorable, milk a couple of vulgar millionaires of a few pounds to make her happy, splendid, rich as she ought to be. Yes, yes, about that you – offer no opinion! And these people – my dupes, eh?”

“The word’s rather theatrical – as you’re being, Arsenio. But let it pass.”

“Oh, yes, theatrical! I know! If a man doesn’t love just like, and no more than, a bull, in England, he’s theatrical. Well, what about my dupes? The woman with her moneybags, meanly revengeful – Ah, you give her up to me! You haven’t a word to say, friend Julius! And the young man? Let us forgive the good God for creating the young man! He would buy my wife! Ah, would he? And buy her cheap! All I’ve had of him would perhaps buy her a fur coat! For the rest, he relied on his fascinations. Cheaper than cash! I would have cashed a million pounds and flung them at her feet!”

“But that’s just as vulgar,” I protested, rather weakly. I was a little carried away by Arsenio’s eloquence; it was at least a point of view which I had not sufficiently considered.

“Not from him! It would be giving what he loves best!” He laughed in a bitter triumph, then suddenly flung himself down into his chair again. “I had ten louis left – five of hers, five of his. With hers I bought the ticket; on his I starved till the draw came. Am I not revenged on the woman who would humiliate my wife, on the man who would buy the honor of Donna Lucinda Valdez?”

“It’s about the oddest kind of revenge I ever heard of,” was all I found to say. “You’ll complete it, I suppose, by dazzling Godfrey, when he arrives, with the spectacle of Luanda’s virtuous splendor? Or is he to find her still selling needlework on the Piazza?”

He leant across the little table and laid his hand on my arm. I imagined that it must be the table at which Lucinda had once sat, mending her gloves – most skillfully no doubt, for had she not proved herself a fine needlewoman?

“You too are against me?” he asked in a low voice. “Bitterly against me, Julius?”

“Once you took her – yes, here. Then you forsook her. Then you took her again. And you’ve dragged her in the dirt.”

“But now I can – !”

“That to her would be dirt too,” I said. “I suppose she won’t touch that money? That’s why she’s still peddling her wares on the Piazza?”

He made a despairing gesture of assent with his hands – despairing, uncomprehending. Then he raised his head and said proudly, “But if she doesn’t yet understand, I shall make her!” Then, with a sudden change of manner, he added, “And you’ll move into the floor below to-morrow? That’s capital! You might ask us both to dinner – give a housewarming! Louis will look after your marketing and cooking.”

“With the greatest of pleasure,” I agreed, but with some surprise. It would have seemed more natural in him to invite me on the first night.

He saw my surprise; what didn’t he see when he exercised his wits?

“It must be that way; because she never comes into my apartment,” he said, but now quietly, cheerfully, as if he were mentioning another of those whims which are so powerful with women.

CHAPTER XX
LIVING FUNNILY

THE “housewarming” so adroitly suggested by Arsenio duly took place; it was followed by other meetings of the same kind. Louis had evidently received his instructions; every evening at half-past seven he laid dinner for three in my salon; and this without any apology or explanation. When his table was spread, he would say, “I will inform Madame and Monsieur that dinner is served.” Presently Madame and Monsieur would arrive – separately; Madame first (I think Arsenio listened until he heard her step passing his landing), Monsieur completing the party. I played host – rather ostentatiously; there had to be no mistake as to who was the host; and every morning I gave Louis money for the marketing.

Except for this evening meeting, we three saw little of one another. Arsenio was either out or shut up in his own apartment all day; Lucinda went punctually to her work in the morning and did not return till six o’clock; I did the sights, went sailing sometimes, or just mooned about; I met Lucinda now and then, but beyond a nod and a smile she took no notice of me; there were no more excursions to the Lido. Perhaps the claims of business did not permit them to her; perhaps she thought them unnecessary, in view of our opportunities for conversation in the evening.

For we had many. Arsenio’s views on the position in which he found himself had appeared pretty clearly from what he had said. By an incomprehensible perversity – of fate, of woman, of English temperament and morals – his grand coup had proved a failure; he would not accept that failure as final, but neither for the moment could he alter it. He always seemed to himself on the brink of success; every day he was tantalized by a fresh rebuff. She was friendly, but icily cold and, beyond doubt, subtly, within herself, ridiculing him. The result was that, in the old phrase, he could live neither with her nor without her. The daily meeting which he had engineered, with my aid (and at my expense), was a daily disappointment; his temper could endure only a certain amount of her society in the mood in which she presented herself to him. After that, his patience gave; he probably felt that his self-control would. So always, soon after our meal was finished, he would go off on some pretext or another; sometimes we heard him above in his own apartment, walking about restlessly; sometimes we heard him go downstairs past my landing – out somewhere. He seldom came back before ten o’clock; and his return was always the signal for Lucinda to retire to her own quarters at the top of the house.

During his absence she and I sat together, talking or in silence, I smoking, she sewing; if the evening was fine and warm, we sat in the armchairs by the little table in the window; if the weather was chilly – and in that dingy stone-floored room it was apt to seem chillier than it was – Louis made us a little fire of chips and logs, and we sat close by it. The old fleeting intimacy of Ste. Maxime renewed itself between us. After five or six evenings spent in this fashion, it almost seemed as though Arsenio were a visitor who came and went, while she and I belonged to the establishment.

“The atmosphere’s quite domestic,” I said to her with a smile. It was cold that night; we were close by the fire; her fingers were busy with her work under the light of the one lamp which showed up her face in clear outline – just as it had been defined against the gloom of the dark salle-à-manger at Ste. Maxime.

“Well, you see, you’re a restful sort of person to be with,” she answered, smiling, but not looking up, and going on with her sewing.

We had not talked much more about her affairs, or Arsenio’s. She seemed to think that enough had been said as to those, on the Lido; her conversation had been mostly on general matters, though she also took pleasure in describing to me the incidents and humors of her business hours, both here at Venice and in the past at Ste. Maxime and Nice. To-night I felt impelled to get a little nearer to her secret thoughts again.

“Wasn’t Waldo restful – barring an occasional storm?”

“Yes; but then – as I’ve told you – at that time I wasn’t. Never for an hour really. Now I am. I should be quite content to go on just as we are forever.” She looked up and gave me a smile. “I include you in ‘we’, Julius. You give me a sense of safety.”

“You can’t sell needlework on the Piazza all your life,” I expostulated.

“Really I could quite happily, if only I were let alone – otherwise. But I shan’t be, of course. Arsenio will get tired of his present tactics soon – the ones he’s followed since you came. We shall either go back to storms and heroics again, or he’ll discover something else. Just now he’s trying the patient, the pathetic! But he won’t stick to that long. It’s not in his nature.”

How calmly now she analyzed and dissected him! With amusement still mingled with her scorn, but – it must be repeated – with the old proportions terribly reversed. It cannot be denied that there was something cruel in the relentless vision of him which she had now achieved.

“He’ll try something spectacular next, I expect,” she pursued, delicately biting off a thread.

“You don’t mean – what you referred to on the Lido?” I asked, raising my brows and passing my hand across my jugular vein.

“Oh, no! That would be something real. His will be a performance of some sort. It’s ten days since he poured all his bank notes on the table before me, and swore he’d burn them and kill himself if I didn’t pick them up. Of course he hasn’t done either! He’s locked them up again, and he’s trying to get you to persuade me to see reason – in the way he sees it!”

“But I’ve told him that – I’ve told what I think of him – or as good as!”

“Well, as soon as he’s convinced this plan won’t work, he’ll try another. You’ll see!” She smiled again. “I shouldn’t wonder if the arrival of Godfrey Frost were to produce some manifestation, some change in his campaign.”

It was almost the first – I am not sure that it was not absolutely the first – time that she had referred to Godfrey. Though I felt considerable curiosity about her feelings with regard to that young man, I had forborne to question her. Whatever he might be in himself, he was friend, partner, kinsman to Nina Dundrannan. The subject might not be agreeable.

“What’s that young man coming here for?” I asked.

Something in my tone evidently amused her. She laid her work down beside her, drew her chair nearer the fire, and stretched out her legs towards the blaze. She was thoughtful as well as amused, questioning herself as well as talking to me; it was quite in her old fashion.

“I liked him; he amused me – and it amused me. He’s Nina, isn’t he? Nina writ large and clumsily? What she is delicately, he is coarsely. Oh, well, that’s rather a hard word, perhaps. I mean, obviously, insistently. Where she carries an atmosphere, he works an air pump. Still I liked him; he was kind to me; he gave me treats – as you did. And it was fun poaching on Nina’s preserves. After all, she didn’t have it all her own way when we met at Cimiez!”

“She’s not having it now, I should imagine – since he’s coming to Venice.”

“I like treats, and I like being admired, and I liked the poaching,” Lucinda pursued. “He gave me all that. And he really was generously indignant at my having to earn an honest living – no, having to earn a poor living, I mean.”

“He gave Arsenio money too, didn’t he?” Of course I knew the answer, but I had my reason for putting the question.

“Yes; I didn’t know it, but I suspected it – or Arsenio wouldn’t have been so accommodating to him. But he really wanted to help me, to make things easier for me. That wasn’t her motive!”

Remembering what I did of Lady Dundrannan’s attitude and demeanor during my stay at Villa San Carlo, I did not feel equal to arguing that it was.

“So – altogether – I let him flirt with me a good deal. I don’t think you know much about flirtation, do you, Julius? Oh, I don’t mean love! Well, it’s a series of advances and retreats, you see.” (She entered on this exposition with a feigned and hollow gravity.) “When the man advances, the woman retreats. But if the man retreats, the woman advances. And so it goes on. Do you at all see, Julius?”

“I’m disposed to believe that you’re giving me a practical demonstration – of the advance!”

She laughed gaily. “Pure theory – for the moment, at all events! But he didn’t always advance at the proper moment. Never you dare to tell Nina that! But he didn’t. I’m not a vain woman, am I, or I shouldn’t tell even you! Something always seemed to bring him up short. Fear of Nina, do you think? Or was he too big a man? Or had he scruples?”

“A bit of all three, perhaps.” I had had the benefit of another version of this story – at Paris.

“Anyhow he never did, or suggested, anything very desperate. And so – I’m rather wondering what’s bringing him to Venice. Because now we’re rich – we have at least a competence. We’re respectable. Monsieur Valdez can afford to be honest; Madame Valdez can afford to keep straight. Desperation might have had its chance at Nice. Oh, yes, it might easily! It hasn’t surely got half such a good chance now? I mean, it couldn’t seem to have – to Godfrey Frost.”

“I’m not quite sure about that. He saw the famous meeting at Cimiez. He’s told me about it – I told you I’d seen him since, didn’t I? I fancy he understands your feelings better than you think. He has a good brain and – plenty of curiosity.”

“Then if he does understand – and still comes to Venice – ?” She looked at me with her brows raised and a smile on her lips. “Looks serious, doesn’t it?” she ended. She broke into low laughter. “It would be such glorious fun to become Mrs. Godfrey Frost!”

“You’ve got a husband still, remember!”

“That’s nothing – now. Or do you set up Arsenio as morality?”

“Oh, no! If Arsenio’s morality, why, damn morality!” I said.

“And there’s just the piquant touch of uncertainty as to whether I could do it – whether I could become even so much as an unofficial Mrs. Godfrey – whom Nina didn’t know, but whom she’d think about! Still – he is coming to Venice. It’s rather tempting, isn’t it, Julius?”

“Does a revenge on Arsenio come into it at all?”

Her smile disappeared, her face suddenly grew sad. “Oh, no, I’m having that already. I don’t want to have – not as revenge – but I can’t help it. It is so with me – no credit to me, either.”

“All the same, Arsenio isn’t pleased at our friend coming to Venice. He was very glad when I took this apartment – mainly because then Godfrey couldn’t.”

“If you hadn’t come, and he had – I wonder!”

“Do you care for him in the very least?” I asked, perhaps rather hotly.

“No,” she answered with cool carelessness. “But is that the question?” She dropped out of her chair on to her knees before the fire, holding out her hands to warm them. Her face, pale under the lamp, was ruddy in the blaze of the logs. “You’re a silly old idealist, Julius. You idealize even me – me, who did, in this very place, what shouldn’t be done – me who ran away from a good marriage and a better man – me who have knocked about anyhow for years – knowing I was always on sale – I’m on sale every afternoon on the Piazza – if only I chose to make the bargain. But you choose to see me as I was once.” She laughed gently. “Well, I think you’ve saved my life – or my reason – twice – here and at Ste. Maxime – so I suppose I must put up with you!”

“You’ll never go to a man unless you love him,” I said obstinately.

Suddenly she flung her hands high above her head. “Oh, what does one keep in this wicked world, what does one keep?”

Her hands sank down on to her knees – as though their reluctant fall pictured the downward drag of the world on the spirit. In that posture she crouched many minutes without moving; and I, not stirring either, watched her.

“I had my one virtue,” she said at last. “My primitive virtue. I was faithful to my man – even when I tried not to be, still I was. Now I’ve lost even that. It wouldn’t cost me an hour’s sleep to deceive or desert Arsenio. I should, in fact, rather enjoy it, just for its own sake.”

“I daresay. But you’re not for sale – in marriage or out of it. And, as you said, isn’t your revenge complete?”

“That’s the worst of revenge; is it ever, in the end, really complete?” She turned round on me suddenly and laid a hand on my knee. “Yes – that’s what has been in my mind. But it’s only just this minute that I’ve seen it. I daresay you’ve seen it, though, haven’t you? I’m becoming cruel; I’m beginning to enjoy tormenting him. I’ve read somewhere that people who have to punish do sometimes get like that, even when it’s a just punishment. But it’s rather an awful idea.”

Her face was full of a horrified surprise. “I do get things out so, in talking to you,” she added in a hurried murmur. “Oh, not words; thoughts, I mean. You let me go on talking, and I straighten myself out before my own eyes. You know? Till now, I’ve never seen what I was coming down to. Poor old Arsenio! After all, he’s not a snake or a toad, is he?” She laughed tremulously. “Though why should one be cruel even to toads and snakes? One just leaves them alone. That’s what I must do with Arsenio.”

“An illogical conclusion – since he isn’t snake or toad,” I said, as lightly as I could.

“Oh, you know! That’s it! Yes, I’ve been saying that I was very just, and fine, and all that! And I’ve really been enjoying it! Julius dear, has my honest work been all just viciousness – cattiness, you know?”

“God bless you, no! Why do you round on yourself like this? You’ve come through the whole thing splendidly. Oh, you’re human! There’s Nina, and all that, of course. But it’s nonsense to twist the whole thing like that.”

“Yes, it is,” she decided – this time quickly, even abruptly. “It hasn’t been that – not most of it anyhow. But it’s in danger of being it now. It almost is it, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes, at dinner, I’ve thought you a little cruel.”

“Yes – I have been.” She rose to her feet almost with a jump. “If I have to go – to rescue myself from that – will you help me, Julius? Because I’ve no money to go far – to take myself out of his reach.”

As – on this question – we stood opposite to one another, she just murmuring “Yes, that’s it,” I nonplussed at her question, at the whole turn her talk had taken – we heard the tramp of steps on the stone staircase. She flung me a glance; more than one person was coming up. “It’s just like Arsenio not to have told us!” she whispered with a smile.

“You mean – ?” I whispered back.

“He’s been to meet him at the station, of course! Julius, how shall I behave?”

We heard the door of the apartment opened. The next moment Arsenio opened the door of the room, and ushered in Godfrey Frost, in a big fur coat, fresh from the train evidently.

“Here he is!” Arsenio cried, almost triumphantly.

Godfrey stood on the threshold, obviously taken aback. It was clear that Arsenio had not told him that he was to meet the pair of us.

Arsenio wore his most characteristic grin. I could not help smiling at it. Lucinda laughed openly. Godfrey, caught unawares as he was, carried the position off bravely.

“Delightful to see you both! But where am I? Whose charming room is this?”

“It’s the devil and all to know that! We live so funnily,” said Monkey Valdez.

CHAPTER XXI
PARTIE CARRÉE

WHEN I awoke the next morning, it was with the memory of one of the queerest hours that I had ever spent in my life. After I had drunk my coffee, I lay late in bed, reviewing it, smiling over Arsenio’s malicious gayety, over Godfrey’s surly puzzlement, over myself struggling between amusement and disgust, over Lucinda’s delicate aloofness and assumed unconsciousness of anything peculiar in the situation.

For the devil and all – to use his own phrase – took possession of Monkey Valdez. Lucinda was not the only one to whom the infliction of pain and punishment might become a joy. Arsenio had been powerless to prevent Godfrey from coming to Venice; he meant to make him pay for having come; to make him pay, I suppose, for having sought to take advantage of Arsenio’s need, for having dared to think that he could buy Lucinda – from a husband who all but told him that he was willing to sell her! Great crimes in the eyes of Arsenio, now no more in need, now grown rich, yet with his riches turned to useless dross, because of him, and of them, Lucinda would have nothing.

He could not pose as the happy husband. That would not be plausible; Lucinda would not second it, and Godfrey knew too much. But by every means within the range of his wonderful and impish ingenuity, by insinuation and innuendo, by glances, smiles, and gestures, he pointed Godfrey to the inference that I was the favored man, the aspiring, perhaps already the successful, lover. In that Godfrey was to find the explanation of the “funny” way in which we lived – an apartment for each of us, husband and wife meeting only at my board, her cool defensive demeanor towards him, my friendly toleration of his presence, which I must dislike, but also must endure because it was a cover and a screen. None of this, of course, in words, but all acted – admirably acted, so that it was equally impossible for Godfrey not to accept it, and for either Lucinda or myself to repudiate it. Had we tried, he would have made us appear ridiculous; there was not a definite word on which we could fasten, not a peg on which to hang the denial.

Lucinda did not want to deny, to judge by her demeanor; but neither did she do anything or show any signs that could be construed into an admission. She behaved just as a woman of the world would behave in such a situation – with a husband so unreasonable, so ill-bred as to let his jealousy appear in the presence of an outsider! To see nothing of what he meant, not to consider it possible that he could mean it – that would be the woman of the world’s cue; it was perfectly taken up in Lucinda’s cool and remote self-possession, the aloofness of her eyes as she listened to Arsenio, her easy cordiality towards both myself and Godfrey, her absolute ignoring of the “funniness” of our way of living. No, she did not want to deny, any more than she meant actively to aid, the impression. It was Arsenio’s game – let him play it. If to behave naturally tended to strengthen it, that was not her fault. Meanwhile she enjoyed the comedy; not a single direct glance at me told that – only an occasional faint smile at Arsenio’s adroitest touches.

She might be pardoned for enjoying the comedy; it was good. Perhaps for not sharing the distaste that mingled with my own appreciation – for not feeling the disgust that I felt at this cheapening of her. In her eyes Arsenio had already cheapened her to the uttermost; he could do nothing more in that direction. He could still give her pleasure – of a kind; by suffering cruelty himself, as it seemed, or by being cleverly cruel to others. He could no longer give her pain; he had exhausted his power to do that.

He knew what he could do and what he could not. If she was a character in his comedy, she was his audience too. He played to her for all he was worth; he saw the occasional smile and understood it as well as I did. His eyes sought for any faint indications of her applause.

And the victim? As I said, he carried off the meeting well at first; the Frost composure stood him in good stead; he was not readily to be shaken out of it. But at last, under Arsenio’s swift succession of pricks, he grew sullen and restive. His puzzled ill-humor vented itself on me, not on his dexterous tormentor.

“When did you make up your mind to come here? You said nothing about anything of the sort in Paris!”

The half-smothered resentment in his tone accused me of treachery – of having stolen a march on him. Arsenio smiled impishly as he listened – himself at last silent for a minute.

“The news of our friends’ good fortune encouraged me to join them,” I said. It was true – roughly; and I was very far from acknowledging any treachery.

This was the first reference that any one had made to the grand coup– to the winning ticket – a reticence which had, no doubt, increased Godfrey’s puzzle. He could not put questions himself, but I had seen him eyeing Lucinda’s black frock; Arsenio too was uncommonly shabby; and, as the latter had incidentally mentioned, I was paying rent: “I can’t afford not to charge it,” he had added with a rueful air, ostentatiously skirting the topic. Now he took it up, quite artificially. “Ah, that bit of luck! Oh, all to the good! It settles our future – doesn’t it, Lucinda?” (Here came one of her rare faint smiles.) “But we’re simple folk with simple tastes. We haven’t substantially altered our mode of living. Lucinda has her work – she likes it. I stick on in the old ancestral garrets.” (“Ancestral” was stretching things a bit – his father had bought the palazzo, and re-christened it.) “But we shall find a use for that windfall yet. Still, now you’ve come, we really must launch out a bit. Julius is one of the family – almost; but you’re an honored guest. Mustn’t we launch out a little, Lucinda?”

“Do as you like. It’s your money,” she answered. “At least, what you don’t owe of it is.”

Then, at that, for a sudden short moment, the real man broke through. “Then none of it’s mine, because I owe it all to you,” he said. The words might have been a continuation of his mockery; they would have borne that construction. But they were not; his voice shook a little; his mind was back on Number Twenty-one and what that meant – or had meant – to him. But he recovered his chosen tone in an instant. “And behold her generosity! She gives it back to me – she won’t touch a penny of it!”

At that a sudden gleam of intelligence shot into Godfrey’s eyes. He fixed them inquiringly on Lucinda. She was in great looks that evening – in her plain, close-fitting, black frock, with never an ornament save a single scarlet flower in her fair hair; he might well look at her; but it was not her beauty that drew his gaze at that moment. He was questioning more than admiring. She gave him back his look steadily, smiling a little, ready to let him make what he could of her husband’s exclamation.

“Let me give one dinner party out of it,” implored Arsenio. “Just we four – a perfect partie carrée. If I do, will you come to it, Lucinda?”

She gave him an amused little nod; he had touched her humor. “Yes, if you give Mr. Frost a dinner, I’ll come,” she said. “What day?”

“Why, the first on which we can eat a dinner! And that’s to-morrow! Upstairs – in my apartment?”

“No – here – if Julius will let us,” she said mildly, but very firmly. “You accept, Mr. Frost? And we’ll all dress up and be smart, – to honor Mr. Frost, and Arsenio’s banquet.”

So the arrangement was made, and it promised, to my thinking, as I lay in bed, another queer evening. Somebody, surely, would break the thin ice on which Arsenio was cutting his capers! What if we all began to speak our true thoughts about one another? But the evening that I was recalling held still something more in it – the most vivid of all its impressions, although the whole of it was vivid enough in my memory.

Godfrey rose to take his leave. “Till to-morrow, then!” he said, as he took Lucinda’s hand, bowing slightly over it; he pressed it, I think, for her fingers stiffened and she frowned – Arsenio standing by, smiling.

“See him down the stairs, Arsenio,” she ordered. “The light’s very dim, and two or three of the steps are broken.”

The two went out! I heard Arsenio’s voice chattering away in the distance as they went down the high steep stairs. Lucinda stood where she was for a minute, and then came across to the chair on which I had sat down, after saying good-night to Godfrey. She dropped on her knees beside it, laying her arms across my knees, and looking up at me with eyes full of tears.

“I do pity him,” she murmured, “I do! And I’d be kind to him. I don’t want him to go on being as bitter and unhappy as he is – oh, you saw! One can’t help being amused, but every time he hit Godfrey, he hit himself too – and harder. But what’s the use? Nothing’s any use except the thing that I can’t do!”

I laid my hand on hers – they lay side by side on my knee. “It’s rather a case of ‘God help us all!’ I think.”

“You too?”

“Yes – when you’re unhappy.”

I felt her hands rise under my hand, and I released them. She took mine between hers and raised it to her lips. Then a silence fell between us, until I became conscious that Arsenio was standing on the threshold, holding the knob of the opened door. He had stolen back with the quietness of a cat; we had neither of us heard a sound of him.

Lucinda saw him, and slowly rose to her feet; she was without a trace of embarrassment. She walked across to the door; he held it wide open for her to pass – she always went upstairs alone – But to-night – against the custom of their nightly parting during the last week – she stopped and took his hand. Her back was towards me now; I could not see her eyes, but there must have been an invitation in them, for he slowly advanced his head towards hers. She did not need to stoop – she was as tall as he was. She kissed him on the forehead.

“If you will be content with peace, peace let it be,” she said.

He made no motion to return the kiss – the invitation could not have carried so far as that; he stood quite still while she passed out and while her footsteps sounded on the stairs.

There came the noise of a door opening and shutting, up above us, on the top floor. He shut the door that he had been still holding, and came slowly up to the hearthrug, by which I sat.

I lit a cigarette. All the while that it took me to smoke it he stood there in silence, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His impishness had dropped from him, exorcised, as it seemed, by Lucinda’s kiss. His face was calm and quiet.

“Well, that’s finished!” he said at last, more to himself than to me. I did not speak; he looked down at me and addressed me more directly. “You saw her? You saw what she meant by that? It was – good-by!”