Part 39 (1/2)

”I'm under no obligation to tell you why I've come to Royat. Let us say my liver's out of order.”

”Then my dear,” said I, ”you have come to the wrong place to cure it.”

She glanced at me wrathfully, took out a cigarette, waved away with an unfriendly gesture the briquette I had drawn from my pocket, and struck one of her own matches. There fell a silence, during which I sat back in my chair, my arms on the elbow and my fingers' tips joined together, and a.s.sumed an air of philosophic meditation.

Presently she said: ”There are times, Tony, when I should like to kill you.”

”I am glad,” said I, ”to note the resumption of human relations.”

”You are always so pragmatically and priggishly correct,” she said.

”My dear,” said I, ”if you want me to sympathize with you in this impossible situation, I'll do it with all my heart. But don't round on me for either bringing it about or not preventing it.”

”I was anxious to know something about Andrew Lackaday--I don't care whether you think me a fool or not”--she was still angry and defiant--”I wrote you pointedly. You did not answer my letter. I wrote again reminding you of your lack of courtesy. You replied like a pretty fellow in a morning coat at the Foreign Office and urbanely ignored my point.”

She puffed indignantly. The terrace began to be deserted. There was a gap of half a dozen tables between us and the next group. The flamboyant Algerian removed the coffee cups. When we were alone again, I reiterated my explanation. At every stage of my knowledge I was held in the bond of secrecy. Lackaday's sensitive soul dreaded, more than all the concentrated high-explosive bombardment of the whole of the late German Army, the possibility of Lady Auriol knowing him as the second-rate music-hall artist.

”You are the woman of his dreams,” said I. ”You're an unapproachable star in mid ether, or whatever fanciful lover's image you like to credit him with. The only thing for his salvation was to make a clean cut. Don't you see?”

”That's all very pretty,” said Auriol. ”But what about me? A clean cut you call it? A man cuts a woman in half and goes off to his own life and thinks he has committed an act of heroic self-sacrifice!”

I put my hand on hers. ”My dear child,” said I, ”if Andrew Lackaday thought you were eating out your heart for him he would be the most flabbergasted creature in the world.”

She bent her capable eyes on me. ”That's a bit dogmatic, isn't it? May I ask if you have any warrant for what you're saying?”

”In his own handwriting.”

I gave a brief account of the ma.n.u.script.

”Where is it?” she asked eagerly.

”In my safe in London--I'm sorry----”

In indignation she flashed: ”I wouldn't read a word of it.”

”Of course not,” said I. ”Nor would I put it into your hands without Lackaday's consent. Anyhow, that's my authority and warrant.”

She threw the stub of her cigarette across the terrace and went back to the original cry:

”Oh Tony, if you had only given me some kind of notion!”

”I've tried to prove to you that I couldn't.”

”I suppose not,” she admitted wearily.

”Men have their standards. Forgive me if I've been unreasonable.”

When a woman employs her last weapon, her confession of unreason, and demands forgiveness, what can a man do but proclaim himself the worm that he is? We went through a pretty scene of reconciliation.

”And now,” said I, ”what did Lackaday, in terms of plain fact, tell you down there?”