Were you thinking how we, sitting side by side, Might be dreaming miles and miles apart?
Two out of the Crowd.
Lettice had had no tea, but she did not stay for it; she uprooted herself, setting back her chair without a sound, and flitted inconspicuously out of the exhibition. On her slow way home, in Tube and omnibus, she did some concentrated thinking. She was not surprised when Beatrice rushed up from the basement to inform her that a lady was waiting in her room, a dazzling lady who had arrived in a taxi-cab; she needed not Beatrice's ecstatic description to tell her who that lady was. She had caught Dorothea's eye across the hall. Well, what must be, must; screwing herself up to face a scene, she climbed the stairs.
 
Her visitor had not sat down; a slight sumptuous figure, she stood posed against the mantelpiece, looking down into the fire. She started at the opening door, and raised her beautiful gazelle-brown eyes filled with tears.
 
"Oh, Lettice!"
 
Lettice made no reply. A wave of obstinacy rose to meet that appeal; she came to the table and stood slowly taking off and smoothing out her gloves. Lettice was sometimes possessed of a dumb devil. Dorothea's eyes opened piteously; her lip quivered, the tears tumbled down her cheeks, but in a flash she was across the room, had seized Lettice and turned her round by force.
 
"I don't care, you can be as angry with me as you like, but you shall listen, you shall answer, if I stay here all night. That woman—what was she doing with Denis?" Lettice was dumb. "Oh, don't you begin about being justly angry[Pg 189] and taking righteous vengeance—see what that sort of rubbish has done for me!" Dorothea cried with passion. "I must know about Denis. What has she done to him?"
 
"I should think you could see that for yourself," said Lettice, opening her lips with extreme and ungracious reluctance.
 
"Yes; but is she—has she—"
 
"Ask some of your friends; they'll know all the London gossip."
 
"I did ask Maurice, but he either couldn't or wouldn't tell; he said he'd been out of town. Lettice, oh, Lettice, you can't surely think—he hasn't really—"
 
"If you mean, do I think he's living with her, I don't know; I should think it very likely. But what does it matter to you? You've done all you wanted—you've had your revenge, and sent Mr. Gardiner to prison."
 
She freed her hands resolutely and turned away. Dorothea flung herself into the nearest chair. Beautiful graceful figure, with the long lines of velvet sweeping to her feet, the plumed hat, the rich hair, the ivory whiteness of cheek and throat above her dark luxurious furs! Lettice hardened her heart. Let her go back to her Maurices and her other friends—she would soon get over it. She turned away, turned her back on her visitor, and began to prepare her solitary meal as though Dorothea did not exist. There was ill will in the very curve of her shoulders.
 
Dorothea looked up.
 
"But I do love him so, Lettice!"
 
"You love him?" exclaimed Lettice, pausing with her egg on its way to the saucepan.
 
"Why, of course—how could any one help it?
 
"You seem to have consoled yourself pretty easily," said Lettice, with a doubtful glance at the violet velvet. Dorothea's eyes followed hers.
 
"Consoled myself? Do you mean this? This?" She crushed up the velvet in her hand with scorn. "Oh, you are stupid. I didn't expect you to be stupid, Lettice, I thought you would understand. What would you have had[Pg 190] me do, after that—that frightful day at Westby? One can't die to order. One has to kill time somehow. I loved Denis—oh, I did, I did love him—right from the very first. You may say I led him on, but I didn't, I didn't, I never thought of such a thing, I never so much as dreamed of its being possible, till one day I woke up and just found it had happened, to us both. So then what could I do but tear it out, and deny it, and make myself be loyal to my husband? I—knew—yes, I suppose I did know that Guy wasn't—I'd seen things—but never anything really bad; and he was always good to me, truth he was, always. Because of my money, I suppose. But I didn't know that then. I had to believe in him, because he was all I had in the world. Oh! I can't talk of it; it sears me to think of those months. Lettice, Lettice, you haven't been married, you don't know how close that brings you. To find you have been mingled, made one with a nature like that—thinking, too, those hideous thoughts my husband had about me—Yes, look at that idea, take it home to you, if you can; and then tell yourself that, however you may try, you have not been married, and you don't and can't know what that awful intimacy means. Oh! I've been thankful, since, that my baby died. I was glad to know the truth; but it tore me in two, Lettice, indeed, indeed it did. Console myself? Why, I've been at Hendon, learning to fly. That man you saw me with, I met him there. I believe he fancies I'm going to marry him. I don't care. I don't know what I've said to him. It's all a blank. I never woke till I saw Denis. Why, that alone might have told you; should I have gone to him as I did, as though I were sure of my welcome, there in the face of everybody, if I'd known what I was doing? I didn't know. I didn't know anything, except that to see him again was like coming home; and I went to him without another thought."
 
Lettice, who all this while had been standing stock-still, with her egg in her spoon, began slowly to get under way. She slid the egg into the water, noted the time, straightened her shoulders, and then said, in a definitely milder tone: "Well, I don't see what you expect me to do."
 
[Pg 191]
 
"Can't we save him?"
 
She shook her head. "Denis goes his own way. It's no use interfering."
 
"If you were to say something—"
 
Another slow shake. "He wouldn't listen. I've seen him like this once before, with a man he'd been good to, who cheated him. He was like a stone." She paused, and added, slowly, slowly, drop by drop distilling for Dorothea's comfort the essence of her meditations in the train: "I don't suppose it will go far. Denis isn't made ............