He made an excuse about cigarettes, and chocolates for her, and left the box, hurrying to the little bar in the promenade, drinking there almost furiously, tasting nothing, waiting, a strange silent figure with a white face, until he felt the old glow re-commencing.

It came. The drugged mind answered to the call, and he went back to the box with light footsteps, full of riotous, evil thoughts.

Rita had withdrawn her chair into the box a little.

She looked up with a smile of welcome as he entered and sat down by her side. She began to eat the chocolates he had brought, and he watched her with greedy eyes.

Suddenly--maid of moods as she was--she pushed the satin-covered box away.

He felt a little white arm pushed through his.

"Gilbert, let's pretend we're married, just for this evening," she said, looking at him with dancing eyes.

"What do you mean, Rita?" he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

The girl half-smiled, flushed a little, and then patted the black sleeve of his coat.

"It's so nice to be together," she whispered. "I am so happy with you.

London is so wonderful with you to show it to me. I only wish it could go on always."

He caught her wrist with his hot hand. "It can, always, if you wish,"

he said.

She started at the fierce note in his voice. "Hush," she said. "You mustn't talk like that." Her face became severe and reproving. She turned it towards the stage.

The remainder of the evening alternated between wild fits of gaiety and rather moody silences. There was absolutely nothing of the crisp, delightful friendship of the drive to Brighton. A new relation was established between them, and yet it was not, as yet, capable of any definition at all.

She was baffling, utterly perplexing. At one moment he thought her his, really in love with him, prepared for all that might mean, at another she was a shy and rather dissatisfied school girl. The nervous strain within him, as the fires of his pa.s.sion burned and crackled, was intense. He fed the flame with alcohol whenever he had an opportunity.

All the old reverence and chivalry of that ideal friendship of which he had sung so sweetly vanished utterly.

A faint, but growing brutality of thought came to him as he considered her. Her innocence did not seem so insistent as before. He could not place her yet. All he knew was that she was certainly not the Rita of his dreams.

Yet with all this, his longing, his subjection to her every whim and mood, grew and grew each moment. He was absolutely pervaded by her.

Honour, prudence, his keen insight were all thrust away in the gathering storm of desire.

They had supper at a glittering palace in the Haymarket. In her simple girlish frock, without much adornment of any sort, she was the prettiest girl in the room. She enjoyed everything with wild avidity, and not the least of the exhilarations of the night was the knowledge--ripe and unmistakable now--of her complete power over him.

Gilbert ate nothing at the Carlton, but drank again. Distinguished still, an arresting personality in any room, his face had become deeply flushed and rather satyr-like as he watched Rita with longing, wonder, and an uneasy suspicion that only added fuel to the flame.

It was after midnight when he drove her home and they parted upon the steps of Queens Mansions.

He staggered a little in the fresh air as he stood there, though Rita in her excitement did not notice it. He had drunk enough during that day and night to have literally _killed_ two ordinary men.

"To-morrow!" he said, trying to put something that he knew was not there into his dull voice. "To-morrow night."

"To-morrow!" she replied. "At the same time," and evading his clumsy attempt at an embrace, she swirled into the hall of the flat with a last kiss of her hand.

And even Prince, at the club, had never seen "Mr. Gilbert" so brutishly intoxicated as he was that night.

CHAPTER III

THIRST

"_A little, pa.s.sionately, not at all?_"

She casts the snowy petals on the air... .

--_Villanelle of Marguerites._

Lothian had taken chambers for a short time in St. James' and near his club. Prince, the valet, had found the rooms for him and the house, indeed, was kept by the man's brother.

Gilbert would not stay at the club. Rita could not come to him there.

He wanted a place where he could be really alone with her.

During the first few days, though they met each night and Gilbert ransacked London to give her varied pleasure, Rita would not come and dine in his chambers. "I couldn't possibly, Gilbert dear," she would say, and the refusal threw him into a suppressed fever of anger and irritation.

He dare show little or nothing of it, however. Always he had a haunting fear that he might lose her. If she was silent or seemed cold he trembled inwardly and redoubled his efforts to please, to gratify her slightest whim, to bring her back to gaiety and a caressing, half lover-like manner.

She knew it thoroughly and would play upon him like a piano, striking what chords she wished.

He spent money like water, and in hardly any time at all, the girl whose salary was thirty-five shillings a week found a delirious joy in expensive wines and foods, in rare flowers, in what was to her an astounding _vie de luxe_. If they went to a theatre--"Gilbert, we simply must have the stage box. I'm not in the mood to sit _anywhere_ else to-night,"--and the stage box it was.

There is a shop in Bond Street where foolish people buy cigarettes which cost three pence or four pence each and a box of a hundred is bought for two guineas or so. Rita wouldn't smoke any others. Rita knew no more about wine than she did about astronomy, but she would pucker her pretty brows over the _carte des vins_ in this or that luxurious restaurant, and invariably her choice would fall upon the most expensive. Once, it was at the Ritz, she noticed the word Tokay--a costly Johannesburger wine--and asked Gilbert what it was. He explained, and then, to interest her, went on to tell of the Imperial Tokay, the priceless wine which is almost un.o.btainable.

"But surely one could get it _here_?" she had said eagerly.

"It's not on the card, dear."

"_Do_ ask, Gilbert!"

He asked. A very special functionary was called, who hesitated, hummed and hawed. "There _was_ some of the wine in the cellars, a half bin, just as there _was_ some of the famous White Hermitage--but, but"--he whispered in Gilbert's ear, "The King of Spain, um um um--The Grand Duke Alexis--you'll understand, sir, 'm 'm."

They were favoured with a bottle at last. Rita was triumphant. Gilbert didn't touch it. Rita drank two gla.s.ses and it cost five pounds.

Lothian did not care twopence. He had been poor after he left Oxford.

His father, the solicitor, who never seemed to understand him or to care much about him, had made him an infinitesimal allowance during the young man's journalistic days. Then, when the old man died he had left his son a comfortable income. Mary had money also. The house at Mortland Royal was their own, they lived in considerable comfort but neither had really expensive tastes and they did not spend their mutual income by a long way. Gilbert's poems had sold largely also. He was that rare bird, a poet who actually made money--probably because he could have done very well without it.

It did not, therefore, incommode him in the least to satisfy every whim of Rita's. If it amused her to have wine at five pounds a bottle, what on earth did it matter? Frugal in his tastes and likings himself--save only in a quant.i.ty of cheap poison he procured--he was lavish for others. Although, thinking it would amuse him, his wife had begged him to buy a motor-car he had always been too lazy or indifferent to do so.

So he had plenty of money. If Rita Wallace had been one of the devouring harpies of Paris, who--if pearls really would melt in champagne--would drink nothing else, Gilbert could have paid the piper for a few weeks at any rate.

But Rita was curious. He would have given her anything. Over and over again he had pressed her to have things--bracelets, a ring, a necklace.

She had refused with absolute decision.