Possession (Bromfield)/Chapter 64

by Louis Bromfield

64

IT was a cold gray afternoon in the spring when the sun, breaking through the clouds, picked out for brief moments the faint green on the trees of the little park in the Avenue du Bois. Side by side the white houses stood, withdrawn a little from the street, flamboyant yet cold, ornate but barren. Sabine, watching them from the window of her tiny motor, was thankful again in a comfortable indefinite fashion that she had escaped from their insufferable pomp into the tiny, exquisite house in the Rue Tilsit.

Of late she had come at times to forget all the secret misery of the twelve years; she had been almost happy, as nearly happy as it was possible for her to be. It seemed to her now that circumstances had been cruel. She should have been born a man; and as a man, with a freedom from all the world of Mrs. Champion and her Virgins, she would have turned her mind to science. It was that sort of a mind; and it was only recently that she had come to believe it wasted . . . frittered away on tiny, nonsensical things, things which in the end only ate into her own chance for happiness. In all her life there had been nothing which had taken possession of her—nothing save the barren, futile passion for her husband. Her life, she reflected, had been a wasted one. As a man, she would have been free . . . free in the same fashion as Ellen Tolliver. She could have done as she liked, waiting upon no one. It seemed to her that her whole life had been spent in going from place to place, always in a tiny, expensive motor, arriving nowhere in the end. She was neither one thing nor the other; she had fallen somewhere between the sterility of Janey and Margaret Champion and the fierce activity of Ellen Tolliver.

Ellen Tolliver had been free, without background, without friends, alone, an adventuress (not at all in the evil sense) but one who had gone unhindered toward the thing which possessed her. Perhaps Ellen Tolliver would succeed now where she had failed. None, thought Sabine, knew the perils which lay ahead so well as herself and the old curiosity began to assail her; she wanted passionately to see Ellen Tolliver, to find out from her in any fashion possible, scrupulous or otherwise, what had happened in those months since she said good-by to Callendar and Thérèse. Perhaps Ellen saw him more clearly than herself; perhaps she had discovered his secret . . . the nature of him. She had come to respect Ellen Tolliver.

The car halted. Amedé, neat and mustachioed, stood holding the door for her. With an effort of will she wrapped her fur cloak about her and stepped on to the pavement.

"Wait for me," she said. "I may want you to carry some things. I'll send Victorine when I want you."

The big ornate house had the look of a place closed and deserted; the shutters were up and the shades drawn save in the entresol. At the door, Victorine, who had been clearly watching for her, stood waiting with a gleam in her eye which Sabine, from long association, was able to read. It was a look with which Victorine triumphantly announced household calamities. As Sabine stepped into the great hall, the housekeeper put her finger to her mustachioed lips and murmured, "Madame Callendar is here. . . ." And then, with the air of turning the morsel about, she added, "The young Madame Callendar." And again, when her former mistress seemed not to be sufficiently shocked, she continued, "The new Mrs. Callendar."

For a moment Sabine stood hesitating, as if deciding whether to turn and run; it would have been an excellent excuse for never entering the house again. But far back in her consciousness, the old, insatiable curiosity gnawed and gnawed.

"Why has she returned?" she asked. "Where is Monsieur Callendar?"

Victorine shrugged her fat shoulders. "I don't know, Madame. None of us knows anything. A cable came at noon to-day with the news that she was arriving . . . to make things ready. I telephoned you. . . . I sent messages. The word came that you did not return for lunch and no one knew where you were." With an air of drama, she said again, "The new Madame Callendar came in an hour ago."

Sabine stood biting her crimson lips. If Ellen Tolliver had returned from Tunis, it was not likely that she would be going away soon, and it would be awkward to ask her permission to enter the house. Why had she returned? Why had Callendar not come with her? She turned to Victorine.

"Where is she now?"

"Resting," replied Victorine, "in the boudoir."

(That terrible room with the bearskin rugs and the mirrors sending back and forth innumerable reflections, as if the place were filled with a host of people . . . a host of personalities all of whom were in the end contained within the flesh of the on-looker. . . . Many persons in each of us, thought Sabine. It was comic to think of Ellen Tolliver, so distinguished, so self-possessed, so cold, in the midst of all that cheap demi-mondaine splendor.)

"Are my things ready?"

"I was not sure, Madame, how many things you wished to take away with you. I got ready the things I knew. There may be others."

Sabine made her decision. "I will come in and get them now. Say nothing to Madame Callendar. If she's resting, I'll hurry away without her knowing that I've come."

She slipped a ten franc note into the insinuating palm of Victorine who promptly said, "It's good to see you again, Madame," in a voice which carried another meaning—"We would much prefer you to the new Mrs. Callendar."

Sabine ignored her. "And Monsieur Callendar?" she asked again.

"He did not return, Madame. Nothing was said of him."

 

In the boudoir everhead Ellen lay, with her black dog by her side, staring resentfully at the reflections. She was unable to rest. Lying on the Egyptian chaise longue she surveyed the room and decided that she would have the indecent mirrors taken down to-morrow. She was certain that Sabine was not responsible for them; she suspected, out of the knowledge that had come to her in the past six months, that they were perhaps an idea of Callendar. They were unhealthy, she thought; all the house, for that matter, was unhealthy, even the hall and the glimpse of the darkened drawing room she had been able to snatch on her way up the marble stairs with the red plush rail. It was unhealthy to be stared at, accused day in and day out by these innumerable stupid reflections. It was, truly, an amazing house, and so like Thérèse. Why, she wondered, had Sabine not changed it? Sabine, with her faultless taste, her reserve, her ironic shell, must have hated it, always. Perhaps . . . perhaps she had not dared to oppose him. Perhaps he too, like his mother, had been fond of the house. Perhaps he had looked at Sabine (smiling with his mouth but not his eyes) and said, "We will let it rest for the present. Some day . . ." and so slipped away in that inexplicable, unconquerable fashion he had revealed in the villa at Tunis. Perhaps . . . She began to understand a little of what Sabine's life had been. Out of her own short, vivid experience, she was able to reconstruct bits of it, here and there. And Sabine had endured it for more than twelve years. . . .

The mirrors put her nerves on edge. She loathed the reflections staring back at her from every wall. They were like faces peering in at her . . . her own face repeated over and over again, tiresomely, for she was not vain and wasted no time over mirrors. No, she would have them down at once. If this was to be her home, she would not be prevented by old Thérèse or Richard himself.

Her body ached from the fatigue of the journey from Marseilles yet it was impossible to rest. Her mind was awake, nervous, irritable, now angry, now frustrated, now cold and resolute, but always in its depths uncertain and muddled in a way it had never been before. Could it be that she was losing her grip upon life? That she was being swallowed up? Always she had known exactly what it was she wanted, what it was she would do. But now . . .

At length the restlessness became unbearable and, followed by the black dog, she rose and set out to explore the rest of the house. She went from room to room and returned at length to the stairway. The rooms, each one, were associated in some way with Thérèse, with Callendar, with Sabine. In her weariness and confusion, she could not drive them from her mind. They tormented her as she turned down the marble steps. She kept thinking of the night when Sabine had allowed Callendar and herself to drive home together from the house on Murray Hill. She understood now how wise Sabine had been, how subtle. She must have known then who it was that Callendar loved; she must have thought that in the end Callendar would never marry that struggling, gauche young girl who had fascinated him. Neither of them (she thought with satisfaction) had known the strength of that raw young girl. They had thought her, perhaps, stupid and unable to protect herself against such a rich and glamorous lover. . . .

Half down the stairs, in the very midst of these thoughts, she was interrupted by the sound of voices which came from the drawing-room. The shutters had been opened and the curtains flung back and in the twilight which filtered through she saw dimly two figures bending over a little pile of bric-à-brac. The one was Victorine. The other figure was familiar—she could not say in what way. Halting for a moment she watched them and, as they became aware of her presence, the stranger turned toward her and she saw that it was Sabine, materialized, one might have said, out of her very thoughts.

 

She would have turned back, pretending she had seen nothing (perhaps Sabine would have hidden herself in a closet or behind a sofa, anywhere) but it was too late now. They had seen each other; they had stood for a time staring. It was impossible now to behave in any such idiotic fashion. Ellen smiled and, moving on down the stairs, was certain now of what she had suspected an hour earlier when the housekeeper greeted her—that old Victorine was devoted to the first Mrs. Callendar and looked upon herself as an intruder. Victorine, she fancied, had conspired to let Sabine into the house without announcing her.

Halting only to cuff Hansi and stop his growling, she crossed the great black and white squares of the tesselated hall and stepped into the drawing-room. She smiled and held out her hand.

"No one told me you had come in," she said. "It's pleasant to see you. . . . I arrived only an hour ago from Marseilles."

She found herself taking Sabine's hand. Their greeting was like one between two men, old friends—a symbol of the curious understanding which had existed between them since the very beginning. It seemed that they were neither friends, nor enemies, but something in between. They were always being thrown together, though neither would have said that she sought the company of the other.

Sabine laughed, with a disarming air of honesty. "I feel a fool," she said, and then explained how it was she had to come in. "I took a chance of being able to escape without your knowing it, but I am an unlucky gambler. I've never had any luck. I'm sorry." She laughed again and added, "I've no doubt (indicating Victorine) that she is enjoying it all immensely."

It was true. Victorine stood riveted to the floor, her eyes bright with curiosity. Clearly she was confused and annoyed that they spoke English, which she could not understand.

"I'll go then," continued Sabine. "I shan't steal anything which doesn't belong to me."

At this Ellen laughed. "I've seen nothing in the house that you mightn't steal . . . gladly, for all of me."

"The boudoir . . ." murmured Sabine with understanding as she gathered up her parcels. She might have added, "Callendar and Thérèse think it a beautiful house. It suits them." But because she knew the remark would have a feline sound, she kept silent. Besides it was probable that Ellen already knew it, perfectly. She bade Victorine summon Amedé and when the housekeeper was gone, Ellen moved a little nearer and said in a low voice, "You mustn't go. You must stay for a little time. . . . Stay for a cup of tea."

But Sabine declined, protesting. "No. . . . I've a score of errands. I really must go . . . and honestly it seems to me an absurd situation."

Ellen laid one hand on her shoulder and, looking at her closely, repeated, "You must stay. . . . I must talk to some one. . . . There is so much to discuss."

Slowly Sabine put down her parcels, subdued once more by the old curiosity. (How could she resist the promise of such revelations?) Amedé appeared to carry away the larger bundles and she said to him, "Wait for me. I'm having tea with Mrs. Callendar."

And the eyes of Amedé grew as bright, as filled with curiosity as those of Victorine. In the hallway the housekeeper said to him with a grimace, "These Americans! What a cold blooded lot! The first wife and the second having tea in the husband's house!"

 

In the little sitting room where a year ago Thérèse had swept the papers from the table into her untidy reticule, Sabine and Ellen settled themselves to talk, Ellen looking worn and tired, as if a part of her tremendous spirit had been subdued or had slipped away from her, Sabine refreshed, worldly, elegant, mistress of herself . . . the Sabine who had existed in the first days of the house on Murray Hill. The odd sense of comradeship persisted. It was the same spirit that had united them on the morning, long ago, when Sabine called at the Rue Raynouard, arriving as an enemy and departing as a friend. (She had been right in the instinct that led her into that call. Ellen belonged to him now, after all those years, as much of her as any mere process of law could deliver into his hands.)

It was Victorine who broke the precedent of fifteen years by bringing the tea with her own hands. Victorine, the housekeeper, the head of the entire ménage in the Avenue du Bois, bent her dignity, stepped down from her pedestal to carry a tea tray, because she feared that some morsel of fascinating interest might escape her ears. How could she resist this spectacle? This occasion? This friendly encounter ("Figure-toi," she would say in the servants' hall) between the two wives of her master. These Americans. . . .

But she strained her ears and summoned in vain a youthful uncertain memory of English, for neither of the wives said anything of importance while she was in the room. They discussed the lateness of the spring, and even the political conditions, as if there were nothing at all extraordinary in the situation. (The cabinet, said the new Mrs. Callendar, in which M. de Cyon had served, was gone to the wall and all his gentle intrigues come to nothing.)

When Victorine, having exhausted all the possibilities of delay by poking and fussing over the tea tray, was forced by decency to quit the room, Sabine rose and said, "I know the habits of Victorine. She is at this minute standing outside the door."

To prove it she walked quickly to the door and, flinging it open, saw Victorine sidle away with a pompous air of having many duties upon her mind.

"She has listened like that before . . . many times. It is her curiosity and one can't blame her for that. If I had been born a servant I should have spent all my time at keyholes. All the same she should have been sent away long ago. One has only to shoo her off whenever there is anything important in the air."

It was her way of opening a discussion for which she hungered with a violence that made the curiosity of Victorine pale in comparison. But Ellen said nothing. She poured the tea and continued to talk of politics and the spring. It was not easy for her, who had never confided in any one. She sat behind the tea tray in the amazing, baroque room conscious that she was in the midst of a fantastic situation, yet unable to take one step in the direction she desired. She looked tall and handsome and dignified, but a little sad and weary. It was the sadness which conveyed to Sabine what was in the air.

"And Richard," she asked abruptly. "How is he?"

"I have left him," Ellen replied slowly, "for a time, at any rate."

She spoke with her eyes cast down, as if it shamed her to confess that she had not made of the marriage a complete success. She pretended to be busily engaged with the flame beneath the silver teakettle. "I do not know whether I shall go back. I am thinking it out . . . trying to decide."

Sabine, too wise to interrupt, lighted a cigarette, threw back her fur coat and waited.

"I have to decide, you see, between two things. . . . Between myself and him, you might say. Or better perhaps, whether I shall exist only in relation to him." She looked up suddenly, with an air of assurance which must have fascinated Sabine, who sat thinking of Ellen as she had been in the days of Murray Hill. "It is not only my music . . . my career. He hates that and he hates it because, in spite of anything he can do, I shall always be known to the world as Lilli Barr and not as Mrs. Callendar. I think he forgot to take that into consideration. He is very confident, very sure of himself."

Sabine still smiled faintly.

"I think you understand what it is I mean. I have been married only six months but I realize that one of us must die . . . either Lilli Barr or Mrs. Callendar. I am trying to decide which it must be. It is hard because both of them are very much alive and neither of them is still in her first youth. That's what makes it difficult. I don't know whether it is worth while to kill Lilli Barr in order that Mrs. Callendar may live and (she made a wry face) be all that is to be expected of a lady in her position . . . the wife of Richard Callendar. I fancy you understand what I mean." She leaned forward and asked, "Will you have another cup? . . . No?"

She discussed the problem coldly, with an air of utter detachment; these two creatures—Lilli Barr and the second Mrs. Callendar—might have existed without any relation to herself. Sabine, understanding perhaps that it was only in such a fashion that she was able to discuss the affair at all, took her cue and said, "The first Mrs. Callendar is dead. She has been dying for some months, but she is dead, completely dead. And Sabine Cane is alive again, more alive than she has ever been . . . and free. My God! How free!"

For a time Ellen sat thoughtfully staring into the fire and when at length she spoke, it was to say, "Ah! I know what you mean by being free. I know perfectly. I can imagine what it must have been. . . . I've seen it myself."

And while she talked thus, calmly, with the one woman in the world who had every reason to hate her, a woman whom she had defeated but who still seemed in some outlandish fashion a friend and ally, she kept seeing the villa and the white-walled garden in Tunis. She kept seeing her husband (who had once been Sabine's husband) walking up and down in the cool of the evening, a few feet from her chair yet as remote as if he had been on the opposite side of the white desert beyond the walls. She saw him walking and smoking and ignoring her, his strong brown hands clasped behind him, absorbed always in some mystery which had nothing to do with her, and yet conscious (he must have been conscious) of a shadowy conflict that would neither vanish nor be pinned down—a man who shut her out of his existence and yet treated her as a possession. She kept seeing the handsome face, the curved red lips, the finely arched nose, the dark mustaches and above all the cold, gray, unfathomable eyes. (If only once he had given way for a moment. If only once that inhuman aloofness had melted, not into a fierce, glowing passion, but into a touching, simple affection. . . .)

"I know what it is," she repeated slowly. "I wondered sometimes . . . in the long evenings, how you endured it. And I wondered too whether I should ever be able to endure it. You see, the difficulty is that I have no time now to experiment. I must decide. If I gave twelve years of my life, I should be . . ." She thought for a second. "I should be forty-seven. I dare not risk failure at that age. That would be unbearable because there would be nothing ahead." Again she was silent for a time and then murmured, "I wanted to talk with you. I should have come to you if we had not met here. . . . I could not have helped it. It was impossible to talk of him with any one who has not known him . . . who has not lived with him. Such a person could not understand what he was like. . . ."

Sabine sat on the edge of her gilt chair, hungrily, with the air of a woman whose most passionate desire was at last being satisfied. For years she had waited. Only once before—on the morning she called at the Rue Raynouard—had she even spoken of the thing. She had said on that occasion, "You know my husband . . . a little. So you can guess perhaps a little of the story." (It was a different Sabine who sat here saying, "My God! How free!")

The cigarette had burned until it scorched her gray gloves. "But it is different with you. He is in love with you. He never loved me. It was you that he loved always. I know that." And with a pained ironic smile, she added, "Sabine Cane dares say what Mrs. Callendar could not even think."

 

Outside the house the twilight had come down gently over the trees in the little park. Beside Sabine's tiny motor, Amedé waited, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Belowstairs Victorine regaled the servants' hall with an embroidered description of what she had witnessed, but when pressed for details became vague and unsatisfactory.

Sabine stirred and murmured: "Besides, I don't fancy you are entirely . . . How shall I say it? I don't wish to be offensive . . . I don't fancy perhaps that you are completely in love with him. I mean that you have not lost your head. If you gave him up, it would not be the end of everything. . . ."

Ellen sat up very straight, her mouth almost hard. "No," she said. "It would not be the end of everything!" And then relaxing a bit, she continued, "No. But I am in love with him. I do love him. I can't describe it. . . . It's a kind of hypnotism."

It was impossible to be angry with Sabine. She was so calm, so obviously honest; it was impossible not to respect that incredible passion for the truth.

"I know what it is . . . I know," murmured Sabine thoughtfully.

"I think at times that I could give him up," and Ellen snapped her fingers, "like that . . . quickly, without a qualm, without so much as a backward look, and then something reaches out and takes possession of me, and in the next moment I know it is impossible. Once you are entangled, it is not easy to be free." She threw her cigarette half-smoked into the mouth of the fireplace, a monstrous, ornate affair out of all proportion to the room. "My God!" she added with a quick passion. "What is it that he does to us? . . . To women like you and me, who are intelligent women, independent . . . not fools? What is it he does to most women? I have seen them in the hotel at Tunis looking at him. I have seen that look come into his eyes. . . ."

Sabine put down her teacup, leaned forward and said, "It is an animal thing . . . what he does to us. If we are to be honest, it is that. You see, women like you and me never think of that. . . . We take it for granted there is no such thing. . . . But there is, just the same. It is in all of us who are women at all. The power he possesses is the power of most men multiplied many times. . . . Latin women, who are more honest, can deal with it. . . . French women . . . some French women . . . are cynical and rational. . . . And they are better protected than ourselves, because they know what they are about. . . . A woman like old Thérèse could never have been hurt by him. They are protected from suffering, at least a certain kind of suffering. They would not be caught as we have been . . . stupidly."

French women! (thought Ellen). There was Madame Nozières. Had it protected her? Still, her suffering had not been of this sort. It was a different thing. What Sabine said about women like themselves was true. Somehow Sabine had cleared the air. She (Ellen) had always thought of him thus in the moments when her head had been quite clear . . . as an animal, a handsome, docile cat. It explained too why she had always had a small, secret terror of him; why she had always been shocked by the fierceness of his love. When he had come to her in the Babylon Arms the distaste had not been so strong; but he had been more fresh then, less conscious of what he was. When he returned to her, it was with the freshness gone, with the romance worn away so that only the other thing showed through, naked yet fascinating to a woman who (she was honest with herself) . . . a woman who had never known anything but the timid, pitiful love of Clarence.

And there was one thing she could not endure—that she, Ellen Tolliver, the part of her which she had guarded so jealously, should ever be destroyed by losing control over her own body.

And again she kept seeing him, dark and secret, this time as he sat across from her at the table in the small white room overlooking the Mediterranean, with the old sense of conflict rising sharply between them. She was conscious of watching him, as he watched her, of wondering how long she could go on thus, imprisoned. She saw again the gray eyes watching her, stubbornly, as if she were a proud animal which they had set themselves to subdue. It was all confused and hateful because one could never know what he was thinking—whether behind those opaque gray eyes there were thoughts of love or of hatred. There were no intimacies of feeling, or even of taste. He was not a husband such as Fergus would have been, eager and naïvely honest, not stolid and dependable like Robert. . . . He was not like any man she could think of. He was an alien . . . an outsider. She remembered the taunt Rebecca had flung at her, "He is marrying you only to break your will . . . to destroy you. He has waited all these years."

But he had not done it! He had not done it! There were times when she hated only and felt powerful and strong, but times too when her strength oozed from her, leaving her only a poor, silly, feminine creature eager to please and fascinate him—a contemptible creature like those women in the corridors of the hotel in Tunis. No, she would not be destroyed thus!

"Sometimes," observed Sabine, in her cold, measured voice, "I think that men and women are born to be enemies, that even in the happiest of loves there is an element of conflict. One must possess and the other be possessed. There is no helping it. It seems to me that we are always fighting, fighting, to save the part of us which is ourself."

She laughed. "Why, we're doing it now, you know . . . the two of us. Richard, you may say, is the embodiment of all that part of men which we can never bring ourselves to accept . . . women like you and me."

"We quarreled," continued Ellen absorbed in her own trouble. "We had terrible scenes and terrible reconciliations. I am certain that he has already been unfaithful. In the end I came away, but until I stepped on the ship I was not certain that I had the courage. . . . Imagine that! . . . Imagine me not having the courage simply to go from one place to another. I did not tell him I was going until the morning I sailed. There was time then for a quarrel, but not time for a reconciliation, and so I got off." She looked out of the window and continued in a low voice. "And now . . . now I don't know what I'm to do. I came here to this house because I am still his wife. I wanted time to think it over . . . away from him. It would have been absurd to run away and hide like a schoolgirl."

"He will not change," observed Sabine. "I knew him for twelve years. He did not change." She flicked the ash from her cigarette and sighed. "Still, in all that time, we never quarreled. He would never have quarreled over my leaving him. . . . You see, he did not care enough."

 

It was quite dark now and the only light in the room came from the blaze in the huge fireplace. Sabine was drawing on her gloves. She gathered her fur cloak about her and set her small hat at exactly the right angle.

"Do you know the history of this house?" she asked. "It might interest you. You see, it was built originally by a German banker named Wolff to house his mistress. When he killed himself and she disappeared, it fell into the possession of the Callendars. Richard brought me here. . . . I followed the mistress in the possession of the boudoir . . . and now it is yours."

Ellen leaned back silently in her chair. There was something about this house which she had disliked since the moment she entered it . . . something lush and Oriental. So it had been built by a German Jew to please his mistress and after that it had sheltered first Sabine and then herself! The history seemed in some way to throw a light upon her own confusion. The house, it appeared, still carried on its traditions. She and Sabine were ladies. It was impossible to know what the mistress had been. She was dead or retired now, no doubt, in some respectable quarter of a provincial town, or perhaps become the proprietress of a café, or a bad variety actress. It was fascinating to speculate upon what had become of her. What would happen to Sabine? What would happen to herself?

Sabine interrupted her thoughts by saying, "It is ridiculous for me in my position to give you advice. Besides, even if matters were different I'm not sure that I'd do it. Advice means nothing and people seldom take it because they never tell the whole truth. There is always something which they keep concealed, and because it is concealed it is the most important element of all and influences them far more than anything an outsider can say." She stood up and walked over to the fire. "No, there's nothing I can say save that it would be a pity for the world to lose Lilli Barr. She is far more important than Mrs. Callendar, and in the end I think would be the happier of the two."

Across the room Ellen watched the back of her visitor, speculating upon what she could have meant by the long speech. Was it possible that Sabine knew there was something she had not revealed? She grew suddenly jealous and suspicious. Had Sabine been too clever for her? Had all this strange feeling of an alliance between them been simply an illusion tricked up by a shrewd adversary? Did Sabine, standing there with her foot on the fender, fancy that if Callendar were free again she might have him back?

"You see, one of the complications," she said quietly, "is that I am going to have a baby."

At the announcement Sabine turned sharply, with a queer look in her eyes. Years before in this very room, she had made the identical speech to Callendar, and he had turned and kissed her with a new sort of tenderness. But the child had been a girl . . . a poor, sickly little girl. Sabine closed her eyes, and turning, rested her head for a moment against the high mantelpiece. She had the manner of one who had been hurt suddenly.

"It is the heir they wanted," she said sardonically.

"But it may be a girl."

She smiled again, bitterly, and said, "Oh, no! I am certain it will be a boy. You have a genius for success, my dear. You were never a bad gambler. I'm certain you will not fail old Thérèse."

 

At the door it was Victorine (who had been waiting in the shadows) who opened for them. The two Mrs. Callendars said good-by.

"There is only one thing . . ." said Sabine. "I wonder whether he is really worth all this trouble and anxiety. When one thinks of the matter coldly, there is nothing to commend him. He has no virtues either as a husband or a lover. Sometimes I think him merely a stupid animal with immense powers of attraction."

"But none of that makes any difference," said Ellen. "That's the queer thing! It never does."

She watched Sabine until she saw her disappear into the tiny motor whose lights made two bright sparks in the spring darkness, and when she returned to the sitting room she knew suddenly that she had left Callendar for good. There was no longer any doubt about it. If she had not, in her heart, thought of him as a part of the past, she could not have talked as she did with Sabine. And Sabine had been right in knowing that there was something which she had concealed. It was this—that in the months spent in the Tunisian villa there had been moments when she fancied that her eyes were taking on the dumb, pleading look which had always been in the near-sighted eyes of Clarence. The memory came back to her now across all the years. He had beseeched her with his eyes for all that she could not give him, pled with her not to escape forever from his life. And what was his poor, pale love in comparison with this wild, devouring emotion that sometimes took possession of her? For Clarence was not dead yet; he still had the power of returning to her. The past, which she had tried always to forget, arose again and again. She even wondered sometimes what had become of poor, forlorn Mr. Wyck and those other figures, so dim now that they seemed to belong to some earlier life. She could see Clarence once more . . . his pale, tormented eyes, his dumb adoration. It seemed to her that it was this adoration, this abasement which had been the essence of his whole existence.

No, she could not face such a thing!

Hansi, lying by the fire, watched her with his gold eyes while she paced up and down in wild agitation.

It was intolerable, loathsome, impossible that she should ever become possessed . . . possessed as Clarence had once been. She had been free always and it was too late now to change.

 

She had dinner alone in the same room where she had talked with Sabine, and when she had finished she sent for Victorine and told her that she was leaving the house. If there were any messages (for she knew well enough that there would be, perhaps cable after cable) they could be forwarded to the Rue Raynouard where she would be with Madame de Cyon. She was returning now to Lily, as she had done so many times before.

A little before midnight she drove away for the last time from the house in the Avenue du Bois, having spent but ten hours of her life within its flamboyant walls. And by the time the taxicab arrived at Lily's quiet, unobtrusive door her nerves were in a state of panic. She was filled with a dim sense of fleeing from some invisible, nameless thing as she had fled when a child through the dark halls of the house in Sycamore Street.

Lily and Hattie were waiting her, though she had sent no word of her coming. They were not surprised. There had been a cable from Tunis addressed to her, which they had opened and read,

"Sail to-morrow. R. C."

After she had told them, abruptly and without explanation, that she had left Callendar forever, she locked herself in her room and looked at the cable again and again to make certain that she was not out of her senses. She had told him that she would stay at the house in the Avenue du Bois. How could he have known that she would escape so soon from that opulent, fleshly house to the refuge of Lily?

No, it was unbearable. One could not live with a man like that.