Part 19 (1/2)

She paused, looking almost pleadingly at the uncompromising Miss Briggs.

”I'm convinced of this, that no really normal young man could ever be contented long if he married a middle-aged woman. And what intelligent woman is happy with an abnormal man?”

”Caroline, you are so dreadfully frank!”

”I say just what I think.”

”But you think so drastically. And you are so free from sentiment.”

”What is called sentiment is very often nothing but what is described in the Bible as the l.u.s.t of the eye.”

This shaft, perhaps not intended to be a shaft, went home. Lady Sellingworth reddened and looked down.

”I dare say it is,” she murmured. ”But--no doubt some of us are more subject to temptation than others.”

”I'm sure that is so.”

”It's very difficult to give up deliberately nearly all that has made life interesting and attractive to you ever since you can remember.

Caroline, would you advise me to--to abdicate? You know what I mean.”

Miss Briggs's rather plain, but very intelligent, face softened.

”Adela, my dear,” she said, ”I understand a great deal more than you have cared to hint at to me.”

”I know you do.”

”I think that unless you change your way of life in time you are heading straight for tragedy. We both know a lot of women who try to defy the natural law. Many of them are rather beautiful women. But do you think they are happy women? I don't. I know they aren't. Youth laughs at them. I don't know what you feel about it, but I think I would rather be pelted with stones than be jeered at by youth in my middle age. Respect may sound a very dull word, but I think there's something very warm in it when it surrounds you as you get old. In youth we want love, of course, all of us. But in middle age we want respect too. And nothing else takes its place. There's a dignity of the soul, and women like us--I'm older than you, but still we are neither of us very young any longer--only throw it away at a terrible price. When I want to see tragedy I look at the women who try to hang on to what refuses to stay with them. And I soon have to shut my eyes. It's too painful. It's like looking at bones decked out with jewels.”

Lady Sellingworth sat very still. There was a long silence between the two friends. When they spoke again they spoke of other things.

That night Lady Sellingworth told her maid to pack up, as she was returning to London by the morning express on the following day.

At the Gare du Nord there was the usual bustle. But there was not a great crowd of travellers for England, and Lady Sellingworth without difficulty secured a carriage to herself. Her maid stood waiting with the jewel-case while she went to the bookstall to buy something to read on the journey. She felt dull, almost miserable, but absolutely determined. She knew that Caroline was right. She thought she meant to take her advice. At any rate, she would not try to pursue the adventure which had lured her to Paris. How she would be able to live when she got home she did not know. But she would go home. It had been absurd, undignified of her to come to Paris. She would try to forget all about it.

She bought a book and some papers; then she walked to the train.

”Are you going to get in, my lady?” said the maid.

”Yes. You can put in the jewel-case.”

The maid did so, and Lady Sellingworth got into the carriage and sat next to the window on the platform side, facing the engine, with the jewel-case beside her on the next seat. The corridor was between her and the platform. On the right, beyond the carriage door, the line was blocked by another train at rest in the station.

She sat still, not reading, but thinking. The maid went away to her second-cla.s.s carriage.

Lady Sellingworth continued to feel very dull. Now that she was abandoning this adventure, or promise of adventure, she knew how much it had meant to her. It had lifted her out of the anger and depression in which she had been plunged by the Rupert Louth episode. It had appealed to her wildness, had given her new hope, something to look forward to, something that was food for her imagination. She had lived in an imagined future that was romantic, delicious and turbulent. Now she knew exactly how much she had counted on this visit to Paris as the door through which she would pa.s.s into a new and extraordinary romance. She had felt certain that something wonderful, something unconventional, bizarre, perhaps almost maddening, was going to happen to her in Paris.

And now--At this moment she became aware of some influence which drew her attention to the platform on her left. She had not seen anyone; she had simply felt someone. She turned her head and looked through the window of the corridor.

The brown man was on the platform alone, standing still and looking intently towards her carriage. Two or three people pa.s.sed him. He did not move. She felt sure that he was waiting for her to get out, that this time he meant to speak to her.