leave her? For utter folly and worse. She would be a wife to be proud of; there would be no need to apologise for her. Even had there been no Jack Fenning, he knew that a marriage with Ora Pinsent would seem even to himself to need some apology, that he would fear to see smiles mingled with the congratulations, and to hear a sunken murmur of sneers and laughter among the polite applause. He cursed himself for a fool because he did not on that very instant claim her for his. Why, the other woman would not even let him make love to her! He smiled bitterly as he recollected that it was not open to him to make a fool of himself, even if he would. He wanted the bad and could not have it, but because he wanted it vainly, now he was refusing the good. No raw boy could have sailed further in folly. Coming to that conclusion he declared he would take a firm hold on himself. Failing that, his danger was imminent.
They went up together from the supper-room. Now she was set to win or for ever to lose; she could not play such a game twice. "Don't leave me," she said, boldly and directly. "Everybody here is so tiresome. Let's go to the little room at the end, it's generally empty." He appeared to obey her readily, even eagerly, indeed to be grateful for her invitation; it shewed that he had not betrayed himself. The little room was empty and they sat down together. Now he was inclined to silence and seemed thoughtful. Irene, in inward tumult, was outwardly no more than excited to an unusual brightness. After one swift searching glance at him, she faced the guns and hazarded her assault against the full force of the enemy. She began to speak of Ora, dragging her name into the conversation and keeping it there, in spite of his evident desire to avoid the topic. Of Ora her friend she said nothing untrue, nothing scandalous, nothing malicious; she watched her tongue with a jealous care; conscience was awake in her; she would have no backbiting to charge herself with. But she did not see why she should not speak the truth; so she told herself; both the general truths that everybody knew and the special truths which intimacy with Ora Pinsent had revealed to her. Ora spoke plainly, even recklessly, of others; why should she not be spoken about plainly, not recklessly, in her turn? And, no, she said nothing untrue, nothing that she would not have said to Ora's face, in the very, or almost the very, same words.
"Yes, she's a strange creature," assented Bowdon.
"Now Ashley Mead's mad about her! But of course he's only one of a dozen."
Here was dangerous ground; she might have stirred a jealousy which would have undone all that was begun; with many men this result would have been almost certain. But with Bowdon there was wisdom in her line of attack; she roused pride in him, the haughtiness which was in his heart though never in his bearing, the instinct of exclusiveness, the quiet feeling of born superiority to the crowd, the innate dislike of being one of a dozen, of scrambling for a prize instead of reaching out to accept a proffered gift. Ashley Mead, the secretary of his Commission, his protégé– and a dozen more! The memory of his confidence to Ashley became very bitter; if Ashley were favoured, he would laugh over the recollection of that talk! He felt eager to shew Ashley that it was all no more than a whim, hardly more than a joke. Well, there was a ready way to shew Ashley that – and, he told himself, to shew it to himself too, to convince himself of it, at least to put it out of his own power henceforth to question it by word or deed. The great and the little, the conviction of his mind and the prick of his vanity, worked together in him.
He was persuaded now that to go forward on this path would be wise, would make for the worthiness and dignity of his life, save him from unbecoming follies, and intrench him from dangers. If only he could again come to feel the thing sweet as well as wise! There was much to help him – his old impulses which now revived, her unusual brilliancy, the way in which she seemed to draw to him, to delight in talking to him, to make of him a friend more intimate than she had allowed him to consider himself before. He had meant the thing so definitely a few weeks ago; it seemed absurd not to mean it now, not to suppose it would be as pleasant and satisfactory now as it had seemed then. He had been in a delusion of feeling; here was sanity coming back again. He caught at it with an eager, detaining hand.
Suddenly Irene felt that the battle was won; she knew it clearly in an instant. There was a change in his manner, his tones, his eyes, his smile. Now he was making love to her and no longer thinking whether he should make love to her; and to her he could make love thus plainly with one purpose only, and only to one end. She had what she had striven for, in a very little while now it would be offered to her explicitly. For an instant she shrank back from plucking the fruit, now that she had bent the bough down within her reach. There was a revulsion to shame because she had tried, had fought, had set her teeth and struggled till she won. What she had said of Ora Pinsent rose up against her, declaring that its truth was no honest truth since it was not spoken honestly. Babba Flint and his horrible phrase wormed their way back into her mind. But she rose above these falterings; she would not go back now that she had won – had won that triumph which all the world would suppose to be so complete, and had avoided that defeat the thought of whose bitterness had armed her for battle and sustained her in the conflict. In view of Bowdon's former readiness it would be grossly unfair, surely, to speak of hers as the common case of a woman leading a man on; his implied offer had never been withdrawn; she chose now to accept it; that was the whole truth about the matter.
He asked her to be his wife with the fire and spirit of a passion seemingly sincere; she turned to him in a temporary fit of joy, which made her forget the road by which she had travelled to her end. Her low-voiced confession of love made him very glad that he had spoken, very glad for her sake as well as for his own; it was a great thing to make her so happy. If he had refrained, and then found out the anticipations he had raised in her and how he had taught her to build on him, he must have acknowledged a grave infraction of his code. She was, after the first outburst of fearful delight, very gentle and seemed to plead with him; he answered the pleading, half unconsciously, by telling her that he had been so long in finding words because she had encouraged him so little and kept him in such uncertainty. When she heard this she turned her face up to his again with a curiously timid deprecatory affection.
He was for announcing the engagement then and there, as publicly as possible. His avowed motive was his pride; a desire to commit himself beyond recall, to establish the fact and make it impregnable, was the secret spring. Irene would not face the whole assembly, but agreed that the news should be whispered to chosen friends.
"It'll come to the same thing in a very little while," he said with a relieved laugh.
Before the evening ended, the tidings thus disseminated reached Ashley Mead, and he hastened to Irene. Bowdon had left her for the moment, and he detached her easily from the grasp of a casual bore. His felicitations lacked nothing in heartiness.
"But it's no surprise," he laughed. "I was only wondering how long you'd put it off. I mean 'you' in the singular number."
That was pleasant to hear, just what she wanted to hear, just what she wished all the world to say. But she burned to ask him whether he had continued in the same state of anticipation during the last week or two. Suddenly he smiled in a meditative way.
"What's amusing you?" she demanded rather sharply.
"Nothing," he answered. He had been thinking of Bowdon's midnight confidence. He reflected how very different men were. Some day, no doubt, he himself would make a proper and reasonable choice; but he could not have gone so straight from the idea (however foolish the idea) of Ora Pinsent to the fact of Irene Kilnorton. It was to lay aside a rapturous lyric and take up a pleasantly written tale. He found several other such similes for it, the shadow of Sunday being over his mind. He was in great spirits and began to talk merrily and volubly, making fun of his companion, of love, of engaged folk, and so on. She listened very contentedly for awhile, but then began to wonder why Bowdon did not come back to her; she would have risked absurdity to be sure that he could not keep away. She knew men hated that risk above all; but surely he could come back now and talk to her again? She looked round and saw him standing alone; then he wanted to come. With her eyes she gave him a glad invitation; but as he approached there was a sort of embarrassment in his manner, a shamefacedness; he was too much a man of the world to wear that look simply
