know that she understood who the mysterious person was. "Just before I left for Vienna. . . . I have him here with me, at the Ritz. He is very like Richard. . . ."
Mrs. Callendar poured out more sherry. She felt the need of something to aid her. And then she emerged abruptly, after the law of tactics which she usually followed, into the open.
"I don't mind saying, my dear, that you're the one who has fascinated him . . . always."
Ellen smiled coldly. "He is not what one might call a passionate lover."
"He is faithful."
Ellen's smile expanded into a gentle laugh. "One might call it, I suppose, . . . a fidelity of the soul, . . . of the spirit, a sublimated fidelity." There crept into her voice a thin thread of mockery, roused perhaps by the memory of Sabine's confidences.
Thérèse shrugged her fat shoulders and the movement set the plastron of dirty diamonds all a-glitter. "That is that," she observed. "You know him as well as I do."
("Better," thought Ellen, "so much better, because I know how dangerous he is.") But she kept silent.
"I think he would marry you to-morrow . . . if you would have him."
For an instant Ellen came very near to betraying herself. She felt the blood rise into her face. She felt a sudden faintness that emerged dimly from the memories of him as a lover, so charming, so subtle, so given to fierce, quick waves of passion.
"Did he send you to tell me that?" she asked in a low voice.
"No. . . . But I know it just the same. I have talked to him . . . not openly, of course."
("No," thought Ellen, "not openly, but like this, like the way you are talking to me." It was dangerous, this business of insinuation.)
"It is remarkable that the feeling has lasted so long . . . so many years," Thérèse continued. "It has not been like that with
