Raine had judged her very gently. He had rightly guessed that she had fallen upon the thorns wherewith society strews the land outside its own beaten paths. His insight into the depths of her nature had awakened within him a strong man’s yearning pity. In his eyes she was the frail tender thing that had been torn and wounded, and he had taken to his heart the joy of the knowledge that his arms would give her rest and peace at the last.
Although Hockmaster’s revelation had jarred through his whole being, he judged her gently now. He was honest-souled enough to disintegrate ?sthetic disgust from abiding emotion. He was keenly sensible of the agony she had endured at dinner, and he suffered with her truly and loyally. But the ignobleness attendant on all the conditions of Hockmaster’s drunken confidence spread itself for the time like a foul curtain over finer feelings. He could not help wishing that she had told him her story. That the consciousness of her position as a divorced woman had been the cause of the constraint of her letters, he could no longer doubt. That she intended to make all clear to him before she definitely pledged herself to him as his wife, he was absolutely certain. His nature was too loyal for him to suspect otherwise. There he read her truly. But why had she waited? It would have made his present course of action so much more simple, had the spoken confidence between them enabled him to take the initiative. Now his hands were tied. He could do nothing but wait until she made the sign. Thus the thought, in calmer, nobler moments. But then the common story of seduction, with its vulgar stigma of the divorce court, and the personality of the reeling, hiccoughing man, sent a shiver through his flesh.
In the morning he spent an hour with his father, forgetting for the while his own troubles in endeavours to cheer and amuse. On his way out, he met Mme. Boccard, who greeted him with plaintive volubility. His American friend had paid his bill and left orders for his bag to be given to the porter from the H?tel National. She was sorry her establishment had not been to his liking. What did Monsieur Chetwynd think of the dinner? What had been lacking? And the bed? It was a beautiful bed—as it happened, the best in all the pension. Raine consoled her, as best he could, for the American’s defection, but in his heart he was grimly pleased at this sign of grace in his late friend. He had some idea, at least, when sober, of common decency. Mme. Boccard enquired concernedly after the professor, was delighted to hear that he was mending.
“Ah, that is good,” she said, “it would not be suitable if too many people were ill The pension would get a bad name. That poor Mme. Stapleton is still suffering this morning. It is Mr. Chetwynd who will be sorry.”
“Nothing serious?” asked Raine, in some alarm.
“Oh no—une crise des nerfs. Que voulez-vous? Les dames sont comme cela.”
In spite of this information, however, he looked into his room, on his way out, in the vague hope of finding a note from Katherine. But there was none. He felt himself in a cruelly false position. Yet he could do nothing. Like a wise man he resolved to await events and in the meantime to proceed with his usual habits. In accordance therefore with the latter, he walked up the Grand Quai and sat down at one of the tables outside the Café du Nord, where he had been accustomed, before his absence at Chamonix, to read the Journal de Geneve and the previous day’s Figaro. It was pleasant to get back to a part of the former way of life, when Hockmaster was undreamed of. The retirement of his late friend from the pension was a relief to him. He felt he could breathe more freely. If he could be assured that Hockmaster would retire from Geneva as well, and vanish into the Unknown whence he came, he would have been almost happy. He wanted never to set eyes on his face again.
But the particularly undesired invariably happens. He was trying to concentrate his mind upon the literary supplement of the Figaro, when the ingenuous but now detested voice fell upon his ear.
“I was just on my way to ransack the town of Geneva for you.”
Raine looked up frowningly. Hockmaster was standing by his side, sprucely attired, clean-shaven, the pink of freshness. His shirt cuffs were immaculately conspicuous, he wore patent-leather boots and carried a new pair of gloves in his hand. His pale-blue eyes looked as innocent as if they had never gazed upon liquid stronger than a pellucid lake. Immediately after he had spoken he sat down and airily waved away the waiter, who was hovering near for orders.
“Did you particularly desire to see me?” asked Raine, stiffly.
“I do. Particularly. I guess I riled you considerably last night, and my mind would not be easy until I apologized. For anything I did last night and anything I said, I apologize most humbly. I know,” he added with one of his child-like smiles, “that I fell by a long chalk from the image of my Maker, and I can’t expect you to forgive me all at once—but if you were to do it by degrees, beginning from now, you would make me feel that I am gradually approximating to it again.”
There was a quaint charm in the manner of this astonishing man, to which Raine could not help being susceptible, in spite of his dislike. Besides, the ordinary conventions of life bound him to accept an apology so amply tendered.
“You did put me to some trouble,” he said gravely, “and for that I most cordially accept your excuses. For the rest—” he completed the sense with a gesture..
But Hockmaster looked pained.
“I see, Mr. Chetwynd. What you can’t do is to pal on to a man who has betrayed a woman’s honour.”
Raine felt embarrassed. He was aware that he had been disingenuous in shifting the whole weight of his disgust and anger on to that one particular point. The direct appeal did not lack manliness, was evidently sincere. It stirred within him the sense of justice. He tried to realize his attitude towards Hock-master in the case of Katherine being merely a chance acquaintance. Obviously all the complex feelings centering round his love for her ought to go for nothing in his judgment of Hockmaster. Raine was an honourable man, who hated hypocrisy and prejudice and unfair dealing, and the detection of them in himself brought with it an irritating sense of shame.
“I have the privilege of the friendship of the lady in question,” he replied to the American, “and therefore felt a personal resentment of your confidence last night.”
“Mr. Chetwynd,............