Halo, after Vance’s return from Fontainebleau, felt the reaction that follows on a period of inward distress. When she recalled the desperate paths her imagination had travelled she shivered; but looking back at them from safety made the future seem more radiant.

How unworthy, she thought, for the lover and comrade of an artist to yield to such fears — and a comrade was what she most wanted to be. Women who cast in their lot with great men, with geniuses, even with the brilliant dreamers whose dreams never take shape, should be armed against emotional storms and terrors. Over and over again she told herself that her joys were worth the pain, that the pain was part of the rapture; but such theories shrivelled to nothing in the terror that had threatened her very life. If she were going to lose her lover — if she had already lost him — she could only tremble and suffer like other women. Everybody was reduced to the same abject level by the big primitive passions, love and jealousy and hunger; the delicate distinctions and differences with which security adorned them vanished in the storm of their approach.

Then Vance came back; and as soon as he appeared her fear was lifted. He had not been with another woman; he had gone off to think over his book. Her first look in his eyes convinced her that he had not deceived her; and instantly she swore to herself that never again, by word or glance, would she betray resentment or curiosity concerning his comings and goings. Whenever he wanted to get away she would accept his disappearance without surprise. Her yoke should be so light, her nearness so pleasant, that when he came back it should never be because he felt obliged to, but because he was happier with her than elsewhere. New strength and cunning seemed to grow in her as she held him in her arms that night.

The morning after Lorry’s banquet Vance went out early; he had already left the house when Halo woke. She was not sorry to be alone; she had not yet finished typing the manuscript he had brought back from Fontainebleau, and as soon as she had dressed, and given the bonne the orders for the day, she returned to her task. The hours passed in a flash, and she was still trying to unravel the tangled manuscript when she heard his latchkey.

“What — lunch already?” she exclaimed, without lifting her head. He made no answer, and when she stopped typing and looked up at him she was startled by the change in his face.

“Why, Vance, how tired you look — aren’t you well?” she exclaimed. And instantly the little serpent of jealousy reared its sharp head again in her breast. Through her sleep, in the small hours, she had heard Vance unlock the door, coming back from Lorry’s feast, as she supposed; but after all, how did she know? It was nearly daylight when the sound of his latchkey had waked her. What more likely than that one of the women at Lorry’s had taken him home with her after the party? Would there never again be any peace for her heart, Halo wondered?

Vance stood silently looking down on her. At length he came up and laid his arm over her shoulder. “Look here, Halo — ” he said in a constrained voice.

“Yes?” she questioned, her own voice sounding to her as odd and uncertain as his. “NOW—!” she thought with a tremor of apprehension. . .

Vance continued to look at her. “I know why you sent me alone to Lorry’s last night. It was because you knew those New York women would be rude to you. Wasn’t that it?”

She returned his look in surprise; then the weight slipped from her heart, and she almost laughed. “Why, darling, how absurd! I’ve always hated big dinners . . . and I’m so fed up with that crowd at Lorry’s.”

“Yes; so am I.”

“Well, then, you can’t blame me for not going.”

“I blame you for not telling me why you wouldn’t go. Lorry told me. He said Mrs. Glaisher didn’t want to meet you because you’ve left your husband and are living with me.”

Halo drew back from his arm to smile up at him. “Why, you ridiculous boy! I daresay he’s right. Mrs. Glaisher cut me the other day when I met her at Lorry’s door. Oh, deliberately — it was such a funny sensation! It amused me so much that I meant to tell you; but I forgot all about it.”

“It doesn’t amuse me,” said Vance with lowering forehead. “Do you suppose I want to associate with people who think you’re not good enough for them? She asked if she could come here to tea with some of her precious friends, and when I told her you were with me she had the impudence to say she hadn’t known, and of course in that case she couldn’t come. Before I left I told Lorry what I thought about his asking me without you.”

Halo was still laughing and looking up into his eyes. “But, Vanny, it was I who urged Lorry to ask you, because he said the Glaisher and Lady Pevensey were dying to meet the author of ‘The Puritan in Spain’; and I thought if he got you to come it might induce Mrs. Glaisher to help him with his ballet.”

“I don’t care a damn about Lorry’s ballet — ”

“Well, I do; and I’m very sorry you didn’t invite Mrs. Glaisher here. Think what fun for me to hide behind the curtains, and hear what fashionable ladies say to a rising novelist! I begin to think you’ve lost your sense of humour. . .”

But she saw that such pleasantries only perplexed him. For a long while he had not understood her sensitiveness about her position; but now that some one had taken advantage of it to slight her he was ablaze with resentment. She put her hand over his. “Vance — as if anything mattered but you and me!”

“Everything matters to me that’s about you. I should think you’d see how I feel.” He walked up and down the room with agitated steps. “I don’t understand your being so offended about that old woman in Granada whom you’d never seen; and now, when your own brother, and people you used to know, behave as if it was a disgrace to meet you, you just sit and laugh.”

Her eyes followed him tenderly. “But don’t you see that it’s simply because being with you has made everything else seem of no consequence?”

He came back and sat down by her, his brow still gloomy. “That’s it . . . that’s why it makes my blood boil to think that when people treat you like that I have to sit by and hold my tongue. I thought of course we should have been married by this time. And I want you to know I’ve done all I could.”

Halo felt a tremor of joy rush through her. “But I know, darling . . . of course I know. . .”

“I went to see Tarrant last night — ” Vance continued.

She interrupted him with an exclamation of astonishment. “Lewis? Do you mean to say Lewis is in Paris?”

“Yes. I thought perhaps you knew. That Glaisher woman told me. And she said he’d never let you have a divorce; he didn’t approve of divorce, she said. I didn’t believe her, because you’d always told me he wanted to get married himself, and I thought she just said it to spite me. But I was bound I’d get at the truth, and so I hunted him down at his hotel last night, and made him listen to me.”

“Last night? You mean to say you were with Lewis last night?”

He nodded silently, and the unexpectedness of the announcement struck Halo silent also. She had not heard that Lewis Tarrant was in Paris, or indeed in Europe; and the shock of learning that he was in the same place as herself, and that only a few hours earlier, all unsuspected by her, her husband and her lover had been talking her over, silenced every other emotion. The vision of that scene — which, a moment ago, would have appeared too improbable to call up any definite picture — seized painfully on her imagination. It seemed to her that she was gazing at herself stripped and exposed, between these two men who were disputing for her possessio............