laughed outright, and Lucinda's earnestness melted into an answering smile. "What a notion! How did you get it, Linda?"
"Thought it up all out of my own head, strange as it may appear. You see – this is the danger of it all – you make me think, dear. And if you keep that up, first thing you know I'll be all mental – and that would be too awful!"
Bel laughed again, more briefly, and slackened his embrace; and she understood from this that, if she had not actually lost, she had gained nothing.
"Perhaps you're right. At all events, it's worth thinking about."
"You will think it over, Bel – promise?"
"Word of honour. But now – late for an appointment – must run."
Against the better counsel of her instinct, Lucinda put all she had left unsaid into her parting kiss – and felt that his response was forced.
In chagrin she wandered to a window and stood gazing blankly out till recalled by a new voice: "Good morning, Mrs. Druce."
Lucinda wadded the handkerchief into her palm and turned to her secretary, an unruffled countenance.
"Good morning, Elena."
Elena Fiske was conscientiously unalluring in the livery affected by intellect in reduced circumstances. Thanks to a cultivated contempt for powder, her good features wore an honest polish. She walked with a stride and looked you in the eye. Erroneously she conceived her opinion of Lucinda to be privately entertained.
"If you're ready for me," she suggested with perfect poise.
"Yes, quite ready."
Elena consulted a sensible note-book. "I was to remind you to telephone Mrs. Rossiter Wade."
"Oh, yes."
Lucinda took up the telephone but only to find the wire already in use; that is to say, somebody in another part of the house was talking without having thought to disconnect the boudoir extension. Recognizing Bel's voice, she would have hung up at once had she not overheard a name.
"Lucky to catch you in, Amelie," Bellamy was saying in the blandishing accents she knew too well. "About our luncheon, you know – "
"See here, Bel: you're not going to put me off at the last minute!"
"Rather not! But for reasons which I confidently leave to your imagination, it might be better to make it any place but the Ritz. What do you say to the Clique? It's at least discreet – "
"But Bel!" the mocking voice of Amelie Severn put in – "we settled on the Clique instead of the Ritz last night, just before you went home. What's happened to the old memory?"
Bellamy was still stammering sheepishly when Lucinda cutoff.
IV
Frost in the air of that early Winter day lent its sunlight the cold brilliance of diamond-dust. The sky was turquoise glaze, more green than blue, incredibly hard, shining, high and resonant. Though the new year was well launched, snow had not yet fallen, no dismal sierras of mud, slush and rubbish disfigured the city streets and hindered their swift business. But on Fifth avenue, by that mid-morning hour, the crush of motor-cars had grown so dense that one could hardly hope to drive from the Plaza to Thirty-fourth street in less than thirty minutes.
Bellamy, nursing a mood blackly malcontent, fumed over every halt dictated by the winking semaphore lights of the traffic towers. He could have made far better time afoot, and would infinitely have preferred the exercise – indeed, felt need of it. But in his understanding it was essential that the car should set him down in front of the sedate pressed-brick structure on East Thirtieth street whose entrance was flanked by an ever-stainless plate of brass advertising in dignified black letters Offices of the Druce Estate – necessary for the planting of what he was pleased to term his "alibi." It made his mind easier to know he could prove by the chauffeur that he had "gone to business." What he did with himself after passing through those austere portals the chauffeur couldn't know, couldn't be expected to know, consequently couldn't tell.
It was true, Lucinda had never deigned to question a servant about his comings and goings, he had no reason to believe she would ever be so far forgetful of her dignity. Still, if one will flirt with fire, the first rule is to take out insurance.
Notwithstanding the numerous occasions when his own laches and errors of judgment had betrayed Bellamy, his life of a licensed philanderer (so he rated himself) remained one endless intrigue of evasion, a matted tangle of lies, equivocations, shifts and stratagems, to keep account of which was not only a matter of life and death with him but a task to tax the wits of any man. The wonder was less that feet which trod such treacherous ground were known to slip, than that they slipped so seldom.
Merely to admit the need for all this involution of ambiguity and double-dealing grievously affronted self-esteem. Deceit was strangely distasteful to this man who was forever floundering in a muck of it, a quagmire from whose grim suck his feet were never wholly free. In saner interludes, times of disillusion and clear inner vision such as this, he loathed it all, himself most of all. Naturally fastidious, he felt himself defiled, much as if he were constrained continually to dabble those well-manicured hands in a kennel. He would have given half of all he possessed to be free of this feeling of personal dishonor which was the fruit of self-indulgence. A quaint contradiction was to be read in the fact that he knew no way to satisfy his vanity but at the cost of giving his vanity offence.
Today found Bellamy more out of humour with himself than ever before, more disposed to consider turning over a new leaf, a project often mooted by his conscience (always when he was falling out of love) often approved but never seriously tackled.
Now, however, he had every incentive: self-esteem sick to death in sequence to last night's dissipation, anxiety to reanimate it with a noble gesture; mortification due to that lapse of memory which had laid him open to Amelie's derision, accompanied by reluctance to see the lady soon again; most of all, Lucinda's unmistakable appeal to his senses and sensibilities both, in their interview just ended.
There was no one like Linda, not a woman in New York who could hold a candle to her for looks, wit and intelligence, none other whom he could trust, no one who loved him so well. And it would be such a simple matter to do as she suggested, humour her, make her happy – clear out of New York and not return till time had wiped the slate clean of his score, then settle down to behave, and incidentally to respect, himself.
Where was the sense in holding on this tack, ignoring Linda, making her miserable, storing up sure retribution, and meantime playing the silly goat, all for the sake of a few hours of facile excitement? It wasn't as if he couldn't help himself, as if his fatal beauty rendered it impossible for women to resist him. No: the women he flirted with were as ready to flirt with any other man who has as much to offer them…
Why, then go on?
Bellamy assured himself he was damn' sorry that he hadn't, while calling Amelie up from the library, obeyed his first impulse and broken off the appointment altogether. Chances were her resentment would have resulted in a permanent breach. In which event all hands would have been happier. While if he went on now to meet her at this shady Clique Club, the end might easily be, what the outcome of persistence in his present courses must surely be, heart-break, unhappiness, the slime of the divorce courts.
Thrice in the course of the scant hour he spent at his desk Bellamy put out a hand to the telephone, meaning to call up Amelie and call it off; and thrice withheld his hand, partly because he hated the thought of a wrangle over
