"Ah! it is the old story!" she said. "Will you never comprehend, d.i.c.kie, that what is to you hateful in yourself, may to some one else be the last word of attraction, of seduction, even?"

"G.o.d forbid I should ever comprehend that!" he answered. "When I take to glorying in my shame, pluming myself upon my abnormality, then, indeed, I become beyond all example loathsome. The most deplorable moment of my very inglorious career will be precisely that in which I cease to look at myself with dispa.s.sionate contempt."

Helen knelt down, resting her beautiful arms upon the dark hand-rail of the balcony, letting her wrists droop over it into the outer dimness.

The bland light from the open window dwelt on her kneeling figure and bowed head. But it was as well, perhaps, that the night dropped a veil upon her face.

"And yet so it is," she said. "You may repudiate the idea, but the fact remains. I do not say it would affect all women alike--affect those, for instance, whose conception of love, and of the relation between man and woman, is dependent upon the slightly improper and very tedious marriage service as authorised by the English Church. Let the conventional be conventional still! So much the better if you don't appeal to them--meagre, timid, inadequate, respectable--a generation of fashion-plates with a sixpenny book of etiquette, moral and social, stuck inside them to serve for a soul."

Helen's voice broke in a little spasm of laughter, and her hands began, unconsciously, to open and close, open and close, weaving in soft, outer darkness.

"We may leave them out of the argument.--But there remain the elect, Richard, among whom I dare count myself. And over them, never doubt it, just that which you hate and which appears at first sight to separate you so cruelly from other men, gives you a strange empire. You stimulate, you arrest, you satisfy one's imagination, as does the spectacle of some great drama. You are at once enslaved and emanc.i.p.ated by this thing--to you hateful, to me adorable--beyond all measure of bondage or freedom inflicted upon, or enjoyed by, other men. And in this, just this, lies magnificent compensation if you would but see it.

I have always known that--known that if you would put aside your arrogance and pride, and yield yourself a little, it was possible to love you, and give you such joy in loving as one could give to no-one else on earth."

Her voice sweetened yet more. She leaned forward, pressing her bosom against the rough ironwork of the balcony.

"I knew that, from the first hour we met, in the variegated, autumn sunshine, upon the greensward, before the white summer-house overlooking that n.o.ble, English, woodland view. I saw you, and so doing I saw mysteries of joy in myself unimagined by me before. It went very hard with me then, Richard. It has gone very hard with me ever since."

Madame de Vallorbes' words died away in a grave and delicate whisper.

But she did not turn her head, nor did Richard speak. Only, close there beside her, she heard him breathe, panting short and quick even as a dog pants, while a certain vibration seemed to run along the rough ironwork against which she leaned. And by these signs Helen judged her speech, though unanswered, had not been wholly in vain. From below, the luscious fragrance of the garden, the chime of falling water, and the urgent voice of the painted pleasure-city came up about her. Night had veiled the face of Naples, even as Helen's own. Yet lines of innumerable lights described the suave curve of the bay, climbed the heights of Posilipo, were doubled in the oily waters of the harbour, spread abroad alluring gaiety in the wide piazzas, and shone like watchful and soliciting eyes from out the darkness of narrow street, steep lane, and cutthroat alley. While, above all that, high uplifted against the opacity of the starless sky, a blood-red beacon burned on the summit of Vesuvius, the sombre glow of it reflected upon the underside of the ma.s.ses of downward-rolling smoke as upon the belly of some slow-crawling, monstrous serpent.

Suddenly Helen spoke once again, and with apparent inconsequence.

"Richard, you must have known she could never satisfy you--why did you try to marry Constance Quayle?"

"To escape."

"From whom--from me?"

"From myself, which is much the same thing as saying from you, I suppose."

"And you could not escape?"

"So it seems."

"But--but, dear Richard," she said plaintively, yet with very winning sweetness, "why, after all, should you want so desperately to escape?"

Richard moved a little farther from her.

"I have already explained that to you, to the point of insult, so you tell me," he said. "Surely it is unnecessary to go over the ground again?"

"You carry your idealism to the verge of slight absurdity," she answered. "Oh! you of altogether too little faith, how should you gauge the full flavour of the fruit till you have set your teeth in it?

Better, far better, be a sacramentalist like me and embrace the idea through the act, than refuse the act in dread of imperiling the dominion of the idea. You put the cart before the horse with a vengeance, d.i.c.kie! There's such a thing as being so reverently-minded towards your G.o.d that he ceases to be the very least profit or use to you."

And again she heard that panting breath beside her. Again laughter bubbled up in her fair throat, and her hands fell to weaving the soft, outer darkness.

"You must perceive that it cannot end here and thus," she said presently.

"Of course not," he answered. Then, after a moment's pause, he added coldly enough:--"I foresaw that, so I gave orders yesterday that the yacht was not to be laid up, but only to coal and provision, and undergo some imperatively necessary repairs. She should be ready for sea by the end of the week."

Helen turned sideways, and the bland light, from the room within, touched her face now as well as her kneeling figure.

"And then, and then?" she demanded, almost violently.

"Then I shall go," Richard replied. "Where, I do not yet know, but as far, anyhow, as the coal in the yacht's bunkers will drive her.

Distance is more important than locality just now. And I leave you here at the villa, Helen. Do not regret that you came. I don't."

He too had turned to the light, which revealed his face ravaged and aged by stress of emotion, revealed too the homelessness, as of empty s.p.a.ce, resident in his eyes.

"I shall be glad to remember the place pleases and speaks to you. It has been rather a haven of rest to me during these last two years. You would have had it at my death, in any case. You have it a little sooner--that's all."

But Helen held out her arms.

"The villa, the villa," she cried, "what do I want with that! G.o.d in heaven, are you utterly devoid of all sensibility, all heart? Or are you afraid--afraid even yet, oh, very chicken-livered lover--that behind the beauty of Naples you may find the filth? It is not so, d.i.c.kie. It is not so, I tell you.--Look at me. What would you have more? Surely, for any man, my love is good enough!"

And then hurriedly, with a rustling of silken skirts, hot with anger from head to heel, she sprang to her feet.

Across the room one of the men-servants advanced.

"The carriage is at the door, sir," he said.

And Madame de Vallorbes' voice broke in with a singular lightness and nonchalance:--

"Surely it is rather imprudent to go out again to-night? You told me, at dinner, you were not well, that you had had a touch of fever."

She held out her hand, smiling serenely.

"Be advised," she said--"avoid malaria. I shall see you before I go to-morrow? Yes--an afternoon train, I think. Good-night, we meet at breakfast as usual."

She stepped in at the window, gathered up certain small properties--a gold scent-bottle, one or two books, a blotting-case, as with a view to final packing and departure. Just as she reached the door she heard Richard say curtly:--

"Send the carriage round. I shall not want it to-night."

But even so Helen did not turn back. On the contrary, she ran, light of foot as the little dancer, of long ago, with blush-roses in her hat, through all the suite of rooms to her own sea-blue, sea-green bedchamber, and there, sitting down before the toilet-table, greeted her own radiant image in the gla.s.s. Her lips were very red. Her eyes shone like pale stars on a windy night.

"Quick, quick, undress me, Zelie! Put me to bed. I am simply expiring of fatigue," she said.

CHAPTER IX

CONCERNING THAT DAUGHTER OF CUPID AND PSYCHE WHOM MEN CALL VOLUPTAS

The furniture, though otherwise of the customary proportions, had all been dwarfed. This had been achieved in some cases by ingenious design in its construction, in others by the simple process of cutting down, thus reducing table and chair, couch and bureau, in itself of whatever grace of style, dignity of age, or fineness of workmanship, to an equality of uncomely degradation in respect of height. The resultant effect was of false perspective. Nor was this unpleasing effect lessened by the proportions of the room itself. In common with all those of the _entresol_, it was noticeably low in relation to its length and width, while the stunted vaultings of its darkly-frescoed ceiling produced an impression of heaviness rather than of s.p.a.ce.

Bookcases, dwarfed as were all the other furnishings, lined the walls to within about two feet of the spring of the said vaulting. Made of red cedar and unpolished, the cornices and uprights of them were carved with arabesques in high relief. An antique, Persian carpet, sombre in colouring and of great value, covered the greater portion of the pale pink and gray mosaic pavement of the floor. Thick, rusty-red, Genoa-velvet curtains were drawn over each low, square window. A fire of logs burned on the open hearth. And this notwithstanding the unaccustomed warmth of the outside air, did but temper the chill atmosphere of the room and serve to draw a faint aroma from the carven cedar wood.

It was here, to his library,--carried down-stairs by his men-servants as a helpless baby-child might be,--that Richard Calmady had come when Helen de Vallorbes departed so blithely to her bedchamber. And it was here he remained, though nearly two hours had elapsed since then, finding sleep impossible.