Chambers Robert William
The Crimson Tide: A Novel

CHAPTER XVII

“Jim,” said his mother, “Miss Dumont called you on the telephone at an unusual hour last night. You had gone to your room, and on the chance that you were asleep I did not speak to you.”

That was all–sufficient explanation to discount any reproach from her son incident on his comparing notes with the girl in question. Also just enough in her action to convey to the girl a polite hint that the Shotwell family was not at home to people who telephoned at that unconventional hour.

On his way to business that morning, Jim telephoned to Palla, but, learning she was not at home, let the matter rest.

In his sullen and resentful mood he no longer cared–or thought he didn’t, which resulted in the same thing–the accumulation of increasing bitterness during a dull, rainy working day at the office, and a dogged determination to keep clear of this woman until effort to remain away from her was no longer necessary.

For the thing was utterly hopeless; he’d had enough. And in his bruised heart and outraged common sense he was boyishly framing an indictment of modern womanhood–lumping it all and cursing it out–swearing internally at the entire enfranchised pack which the war had set afoot and had licensed to swarm all over everything and raise hell with the ancient and established order of things.

The stormy dark came early; and in this frame of mind when he left the office he sulkily avoided the club.

He very rarely drank anything; but, not knowing what to do, he drifted into the Biltmore bar.

He met a man or two he knew, but declined all suggestions for the evening, turned up his overcoat collar, and started through the hotel toward the northern exit.

And met Marya Lanois face to face.

She was coming from the tea-room with two or three other people, but turned immediately on seeing him and came toward him with hand extended.

“Dear me,” she said, “you look very wet. And you don’t look particularly well. Have you arrived all alone for tea?”

“I had my tea in the bar,” he said. “How are you, Marya?–but I musn’t detain you–” he glanced at the distant group of people who seemed to be awaiting her.

“You are not detaining me,” she said sweetly.

“Your people seem to be waiting–”

“They may go to the deuce. Are you quite alone?”

“I–yes–”

“Shall we have tea together?”

He laughed. “But you’ve had yours–”

“Well, you know there are other things that one sometimes drinks.”

There seemed no way out of it. They went into the tea-room together and seated themselves.

“How is Vanya?” he inquired.

“Vanya gives a concert to-night in Baltimore.”

“And you didn’t go!”

“No. It was rainy. Besides, I hear Vanya play when I desire to hear him.”

Their order was served.

“So you wouldn’t go to Baltimore,” said Jim smilingly. “It strikes me, Marya, that you can be a coldblooded girl when you wish to be.”

“After all, what do you know about me?”

He laughed: “Oh, I don’t mean that I’ve got your number–”

“No. Because I have many numbers. I am a complicated combination,” she added, smiling; “–yet after all, a combination only. And quite simple when one discovers the key to me.”

“I think I know what it is,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Mischief.”

They laughed. Marya, particularly, was intensely amused. She was extremely fetching in her bicorne toque and narrow gown of light turquoise, and her golden beaver scarf and muff.

“Mischief,” she repeated. “I should say not. There seems to be already sufficient mischief loose in the world, with the red tide rising everywhere–in Russia, in Germany, Austria, Italy, England–yes, and here also the crimson tide of Bolshevism begins to move… Tell me; you are coming to the club to-morrow evening, I hope.”

“No.”

“Oh. Why?”

“No,” he repeated, almost sullenly. “I’ve had enough of queerness for a while–”

“Jim! Do you dare include me?”

He had to laugh at her pretence of fury: “No, Marya, you’re just a pretty mischief-maker, I suppose–”

“Then what do you mean by ‘queerness’? Don’t you think it’s sensible to combat Bolshevism and fight it with argument and debate on its own selected camping ground? Don’t you think it is high time somebody faced this crimson tide–that somebody started to build a dyke against this threatened inundation?”

“The best dykes have machine guns behind them, not orators,” he said bluntly.

“My friend, I have seen that, also. And to what have machine guns led us in Petrograd, in Moscow, in Poland, Finland, Courland–” She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “No. I have seen enough blood.”

He said: “I have seen a little myself.”

“Yes, I know. But a soldier is always a soldier, as a hound is always a hound. The blood of the quarry is what their instinct follows. Your goal is death; we only seek to tame.”

“The proper way to check Bolshevism in America is to police the country properly, and kick out the outrageous gang of domestic Bolsheviki who have exploited us, tricked us, lied to us, taxed us unfairly, and in spite of whom we have managed to help our allies win this war.

“Then, when this petty, wretched, crooked bunch has been swept out, and the nation aired and disinfected, and when the burden of taxation is properly distributed, and business dares lift its head again, then start your debates and propaganda and try to educate your enemies if you like. But keep your machine guns oiled.”

“You speak in an uncomplimentary fashion of government,” said the girl, smiling.

“I am all for government. That does not mean that I am for the particular incumbents in office under the present Government. I have no use for them. Know that this war was won, not through them but in spite of them.

“Yet I place loyalty first of all–loyalty to the true ideals of that Government which some of the present incumbents so grotesquely misrepresent.

“That means, stand by the ship and the flag she flies, no matter who steers or what crew capers about her decks.

“That means, watch out for all pirates;–open fire on anything that flies a hostile flag, red or any other colour.

“And that’s my creed, Marya!”

“To shoot; not to debate?”

“An inquest is safer.”

“We shall never agree,” said the girl, laughing. “And I’m rather glad.”

“Why?”

“Because disagreements are more amusing than any entente cordiale, mon ami. It is the opposing forces that never bore each other. In life, too–I mean among human beings. Once they agree, interest lessens.”

“Nonsense,” he said, smiling.

“Oh, it is quite true. Behold us. We don’t agree. But I am interested,” she added with pretty audacity; “so please take me to dinner somewhere.”

“You mean now, as we are?”

“Parbleu! Did you wish to go home and dress?”

“I don’t care if you don’t,” he said.

“Suppose,” she suggested, “we dine where there is something to see.”

“A Broadway joint?” he asked, amused.

“A joint?” she repeated, smilingly perplexed. “Is that a place where we may dine and see a spectacle too and afterward dance?”

“Something of that sort,” he admitted, laughing. But under his careless gaiety an ugly determination had been hardening; he meant to go no more to Palla; he meant to welcome any distraction of the moment to help tide him over the long, grey interval that loomed ahead–welcome any draught that might mitigate the bitter waters he was tasting–and was destined to drain to their revolting dregs.

They went to the Palace of Mirrors and were lucky enough to secure a box.

The food was excellent; the show a gay one.

Between intermissions he took Marya to the floor for a dance or two. The place was uncomfortably crowded: uniforms were everywhere, too; and Jim nodded to many men he knew, and to a few women.

And, in the vast, brilliant place, there was not a man who saw Marya and failed to turn and follow her with his eyes. For Marya had been fashioned to trouble man. And that primitively constructed and obviously-minded sex never failed to become troubled.

“We’d better enjoy our champagne,” remarked Marya. “We’ll be a wineless nation before long, I suppose.”

“It seems rather a pity,” he remarked, “that a man shouldn’t be free to enjoy a glass of claret. But if the unbaked and the half-baked, and the unwashed and the half-washed can’t be trusted to practise moderation, we others ought to abstain, I suppose. Because what is best for the majority ought to be the law for all.”

“If it were left to me,” said the girl, “I’d let the submerged drink themselves to death.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” he said. “I thought you were a socialist!”

“I am. I desire no law except that of individual inclination.”

“Why, that’s Bolshevism!”

Her laughter rang out unrestrained: “I believe in Bolshevism–for myself–but not for anybody else. In other words, I’d like to be autocrat of the world. If I were, I’d let everybody alone unless they interfered with me.”

“And in that event?” he asked, laughing, as the lights all over the house faded to a golden glimmer in preparation for the second part of the spectacle. He could no longer see her clearly across the little table. “What would you do if people interfered with you?” he repeated.

Marya smiled. The last ray of light smouldered in her tiger-red hair; the warm, fragrant, breathing youth of her grew vaguer, merging with the shadows; only the beryl-tinted eyes, which slanted slightly, remained distinct.

Her voice came to him through the music: “If I were autocrat, any man who dared oppose me would have his choice.”

“What choice?”

The music swelled toward a breathless crescendo.

She said: “Oppose me and you shall learn!–”

The house burst into a dazzling flood of moon-tinted light, all thronged with slim shapes whirling in an enchanted dance. Then clouds seemed to gather; the moon slid behind them, leaving a frosty demi-darkness through which, presently, snow began to fall.

The girl leaned toward him, watching the spectacle in silence. Perhaps unconsciously her left hand, satin-smooth, slipped over his–as though the contact were a symbol of enjoyment shared.

Light broke the next moment, revealing the spectacle on stage and floor in all its tinsel magnificence–snow-nymphs, polar-bears, all capering madly until an unearthly shriek heralded the coming of a favorite clown, who tumbled all the way down the stage steps and continued hysterically turning flip-flaps, cart-wheels, and somersaults until he landed with a crash at the foot of the steps again.

A large, highly coloured and over-glossy man, passing under their box during a dancing intermission, bowed rather extravagantly to Jim. He recognised Angelo Puma, with contemptuous amusement at his impudence.

It was evident, too, that Puma was quite ready to linger if encouraged–anxious, in fact, to extend his hand.

But his impudence had already ceased to amuse Jim, and he said carelessly to Marya, in a voice perfectly audible to Puma:

“There goes a man who, in collusion with a squinting partner of his, once beat me out of a commission.”

Puma’s heavy, burning face turned abruptly from Marya, whom he had been looking at; and he continued on across the floor. And Jim forgot him.

They remained until the place closed. Then he took her home.

It was an apartment overlooking the park from Fifty-ninth Street–a big studio and apparently many comfortable rooms–a large, still place where no servants were in evidence and where thick velvety carpets from Ushak and Sultanabad muffled every footfall.

She had insisted on his entering for a moment. He stood looking about him in the great studio, where Vanya’s concert-grand loomed up, a sprawling, shadowy shape under the dim drop-light which once had been a mosque-lamp in Samarcand.

The girl flung stole and muff from her, rolled up her gloves and took a shot at the piano, then, laughing, unpinned her hat and sent it scaling away into the golden dusk somewhere.

“Are you sleepy, Jim?”

A sudden vision of his trouble in the long, long night to face–trouble, insomnia, and the bitterness welling ever fresher with the interminable thoughts he could not suppress, could not control–

“I’m not sleepy,” he said. “But don’t you want to turn in?”

She went over to the piano, and, accompanying herself on deadened pedal where she stood, sang in a low voice the “Snow-Tiger,” with its uncanny refrain:

 
“Tiger-eyes
 
 
Tiger-eyes,
 
 
What do you see
 
 
Far in the dark
 
 
Over the snow?
 
 
Far in the dark
 
 
Over the snow,
Slowly the ghosts of dead men go,–
Horses and riders under the moon
Trample along to the dead men’s rune,
Slava! Slava!
 
 
Over the snow.”
 

“That’s too hilarious a song,” said Jim, laughing. “May I suggest a little rag to properly subdue us?”

“You don’t like Tiger-eyes?”

“I’ve heard more cheerful ditties.”

“When I’m excited by pleasure,” said the girl, “I sing Tiger-eyes.”

“Does it subdue you?”

She looked at him. “No.”

Still standing, she looked down at the keys, struck the muffled chords softly.

 
“Tiger-eyes
 
 
Tiger-eyes,
 
 
Where do they go,
 
 
Far in the dark
 
 
Over the snow?
 
 
Into the dark,
 
 
Over the snow,
 
 
Only the ghosts of the dead men know
 
 
Where they have come from, whither they go,
 
 
Riding at night by the corpse-light glow,
 
 
Slava!Slava!
 
 
Over the snow.”
 

“Well, for the love of Mike–”

Marya’s laughter pealed.

“So you don’t like Tiger-eyes?” she demanded, coming from behind the piano.

“I sure don’t,” he admitted.

“The real Russian name of the song is ‘Words! Words!’ And that’s all the song is–all that any song is–all that anything amounts to–words! words!–” She dropped onto the long couch,–“Anything except–love.”

“You may include that, too,” he said, lighting a cigarette for her; and she blew a ring of smoke at him, saying:

“I may–but I won’t. For goodness sake leave me the last one of my delusions!”

They both laughed and he said she was welcome to her remaining delusion.

“Won’t you share it with me?” she said, her smile innocent enough, save for the audacity of the red mouth.

“Share your delusion?”

“Yes, that too.”

This wouldn’t do. He lighted a cigarette for himself and sauntered over to the piano.

“I hope Vanya’s concert is a success,” he said. “He’s such a charming fellow, Vanya–so considerate, so gentle–” He turned and looked at Marya, and his eyes added: “Why the devil don’t you marry him and have a lot of jolly children?”

There seemed to be in his clear eyes enough for the girl to comprehend something of the question they flung at her.

“I don’t love Vanya,” she said.

“Of course you do!”

“As I might love a child–yes.”

After a silence: “It strikes me,” he said, “that you’re passionately in love.”

“I am.”

“With yourself,” he added, smiling.

“With you.”

This wouldn’t do any longer. The place slightly stifled him with its stillness, rugs–the odours that came from lacquered shapes, looming dimly, flowered and golden in the dusk–the aromatic scent of her cigarette–

“Hell!” he muttered under his breath. “This is no place for a white man.” But aloud he said pleasantly: “My very best wishes for Vanya to-night. Tell him so when he returns–” He put on his overcoat and picked up hat and stick.

“It’s infernally late,” he added, “and I’ve been a beast to keep you up. It was awfully nice of you.”

She rose from the lounge and walked with him to the door.

“Good night,” he said cheerily; but she retained his hand, added her other to it, and put up her face.

“Look here,” he said, smilingly, “I can’t do that, Marya.”

“Why can’t you?”

Her soft breath was on his face; the mouth too near–too near–

“No, I can’t!” he said curtly, but his voice trembled a little.

“Why?” she whispered.

“Because–there’s Vanya. No, I won’t do it!”

“Is that the reason?”

“It’s a reason.”

“I don’t love Vanya. I do love you.”

“Please remember–”

“No! No! I have nothing to remember–unless you give me something–”

“You had better try to remember that Vanya loves you. You and I can’t do a thing like that to Vanya–”

“Are there no other reasons?”

He reddened to the temples: “No, there are not–now. There is no other reason–except myself.”

“Yourself?”

“Yes, damn it, myself! That’s all that remains now to keep me straight. And I’ve been so. That may be news to you. Perhaps you don’t believe it.”

“Is it so, Jim?” she asked in a voice scarcely audible.

“Yes, it is. And so I shall keep on, and play the game that way–play it squarely with Vanya, too–”

He had lost his heavy colour; he stood looking at her with a white, strained, grim expression that tightened the jaw muscles; and she felt his powerful hand clenching between hers.

“It’s no use,” he said between his set lips, “I’ve got to go on–see it through in my own fashion–this rotten thing called life. I’m sorry, Marya, that I’m not a better sport–”

A wave of colour swept her face and her hands suddenly crushed his between them.

“You’re wonderful,” she said. “I do love you.”

But the tense, grey look had come back into his face. Looking at her in silence, presently his gaze seemed to become remote, his absent eyes fixed on something beyond her.

“I’ve a rotten time ahead of me,” he said, not knowing he had spoken. When his eyes reverted to her, his features remained expressionless, but his voice was almost tender as he said good night once more.

Her hands fell away; he opened the door and went out without looking back.

He found a taxi at the Plaza. He was swearing when he got into it. And all the way home he kept repeating to himself: “I’m one of those cursed, creeping Josephs; that’s what I am,–one of those pepless, sanctimonious, creeping Josephs… And I always loathed that poor fish, too!”

CHAPTER XVIII

Shotwell Junior discovered in due course of time the memoranda of the repeated messages which Palla had telephoned to his several clubs, asking him to call her up immediately.

It was rather late to do that now, but his pulses began to quicken again in the old, hopeless way; and he went to the telephone booth and called the number which seemed burnt into his brain forever.

A maid answered; Palla came presently; and he thought her voice seemed colourless and unfamiliar.

“Yes, I’m perfectly well,” she replied to his inquiry; “where in the world did you go that night? I simply couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“What had you wished to say to me?”

“Nothing–except–that I was afraid you were angry when you left, and I didn’t wish you to part with me on such terms. Were you annoyed?”

“No.”

“You say it very curtly, Jim.”

“Is that all you desired to say to me?”

“Yes… I was a little troubled… Something else went wrong, too;–everything seemed to go wrong that night… I thought perhaps–if I could hear your voice–if you’d say something kind–”

“Had you nothing else to tell me, Palla?”

“No… What?”

“Then you haven’t changed your attitude?”

“Toward you? I don’t expect to–”

“You know what I mean!”

“Oh. But, Jim, we can’t discuss that over the telephone.”

“I suppose not… Is anything wrong with you, Palla? Your voice sounds so tired–”

“Does it? I don’t know why. Tell me, please, what did you do that unhappy night?”

“I went home.”

“Directly?”

“Yes.”

“I telephoned your house about twelve, and was informed you were not at home.”

“They thought I was asleep. I’m sorry, Palla–”

“I shouldn’t have telephoned so late,” she interrupted, “I’m afraid that it was your mother who answered; and if it was, I received the snub I deserved!”

“Nonsense! It wasn’t meant that way–”

“I’m afraid it was, Jim. It’s quite all right, though. I won’t do it again… Am I to see you soon?”

“No, not for a while–”

“Are you so busy?”

“There’s no use in my going to you, Palla.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in love with you,” he said bluntly, “and I’m trying to get over it.”

“I thought we were friends, too.”

After a lengthy silence: “You’re right,” he said, “we are.”

She heard his quick, deep breath like a sigh. “Shall I come to-night?”

“I’m expecting some people, Jim–women who desire to establish a Combat Club in Chicago, and they have come on here to consult me.”

“To-morrow night, then?”

“Please.”

“Will you be alone?”

“I expect to be.”

Once more he said: “Palla, is anything worrying you? Are you ill? Is Ilse all right?”

There was a pause, then Palla’s voice, resolutely tranquil. “Everything is all right in the world as long as you are kind to me, Jim. When you’re not, things darken and become queer–”

“Palla!”

“Yes.”

“Listen! This is to serve notice on you. I’m going to make a fight for you.”

After a silence, he heard her sweet, uncertain laughter.

“Jim?”

“Yes, dear.”

“I suppose it would shock you if I made a fight for–you!”

He took it as a jest and laughed at her perverse humour. But what she had meant she herself scarcely realised; and she turned away from the telephone, conscious of a vague excitement invading her and of a vaguer consternation, too. For behind the humorous audacity of her words, she seemed to realise there remained something hidden–something she was on the verge of discovering–something indefinable, menacing, grave enough to dismay her and drive from her lips the last traces of the smile which her audacious jest had left there.

The ladies from Chicago were to dine with her; her maid had hooked her gown; orchids from Jim had just arrived, and she was still pinning them to her waist–still happily thrilled by this lovely symbol of their renewed accord, when the bell rang.

It was much too early to expect anybody: she fastened her orchids and started to descend the stairs for a last glance at the table, when, to her astonishment, she saw Angelo Puma in the hall in the act of depositing his card upon the salver extended by the maid.

He looked up and saw her before she could retreat: she made the best of it and continued on down, greeting him with inquiring amiability:

“Miss Dumont, a thousand excuses for this so bold intrusion,” he began, bowing extravagantly at every word. “Only the urgent importance of my errand could possibly atone for a presumption like there never has been in all–”

“Please step into the drawing room, Mr. Puma, if you have something of importance to say.”

He followed her on tiptoe, flashing his magnificent eyes about the place, still wearing over his evening dress the seal overcoat with its gardenia, which was already making him famous on Broadway.

Palla seated herself, wondering a little at the perfumed splendour of her landlord. He sat on the extreme edge of an arm chair, his glossy hat on his knee.

“Miss Dumont,” he said, laying one white-gloved paw across his shirt-front, “you shall behold in me a desolate man!”

“I’m sorry.” She looked at him in utter perplexity.

“What shall you say to me?” he cried. “What just reproaches shall you address to me, Miss Dumont!”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Mr. Puma,” she said, inclined to laugh, “–until you tell me what is your errand.”

“Miss Dumont, I am most unhappy and embarrass. Because you have pay me in advance for that which I am unable to offer you.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“Alas! You have pay to me by cheque for six months more rent of my hall.”

“Yes.”

“I have given to you a lease for six months more, and with it an option for a year of renewal.”

“Yes.”

“Miss Dumont, behold me desolate.”

“But why?”

“Because I am force by circumstance over which I have no control to cancel this lease and option, and ask you most respectfully to be so kind as to secure other quarters for your club.”

“But we can’t do that!” exclaimed Palla in dismay.

“I am so very sorry–”

“We can’t do it,” added Palla with decision. “It’s utterly impossible, Mr. Puma. All our meetings are arranged for months in advance; all the details are completed. We could not disarrange the programme adopted. From all over the United States people are invited to come on certain fixed dates. All arrangements have been made; you have my cheque and I have your signed lease. No, we are obliged to hold you to your contract, and I’m very sorry if it inconveniences you.”

Puma’s brilliant eyes became tenderly apprehensive.

“Miss Dumont,” he said in a hushed and confidential voice, “believe me when I venture to say to you that your club should leave for reasons most grave, most serious.”

“What reasons?”

“The others–the Red Flag Club. Who knows what such crazy people might do in anger? They are very angry already. They complain that your club has interfere with them–”

“That is exactly why we’re there, Mr. Puma–to interfere with them, neutralise their propaganda, try to draw the same people who listen to their violent tirades. That is why we’re there, and why we refuse to leave. Ours is a crusade of education. We chose that hall because we desired to make the fight in the very camp of the enemy. And I must tell you plainly that we shall not give up our lease, and that we shall hold you to it.”

The dark blood flooded his heavy features:

“I do not desire to take it to the courts,” he said. “I am willing to offer compensation.”

“We couldn’t accept. Don’t you understand, Mr. Puma? We simply must have that particular hall for the Combat Club.”

Puma remained perfectly silent for a few moments. There was still, on his thick lips, the suave smile which had been stamped there since his appearance in her house.

But in this man’s mind and heart there was growing a sort of dull and ferocious fear–fear of elements already gathering and combining to menace his increasing prosperity.

Sullenly he was aware that this hard-won prosperity was threatened. Always its conditions had been unstable at best, but now the atmospheric pressure was slowly growing, and his sky of promise was not as clear.

Some way, somehow, he must manage to evict these women. Twice Sondheim had warned him. And that evening Sondheim had sent him an ultimatum by Kastner.

And Puma was perfectly aware that Karl Kastner knew enough about him to utterly ruin him in the great Republic which was now giving him a fortune and which had never discovered that his own treacherous mission here was the accomplishment of her ruin.

Puma stood up, heavily, cradling his glossy hat. But his urbane smile became brilliant again and he made Palla an extravagant bow.

“It shall be arrange,” he said cheerfully. “I consult my partner–your friend, Mr. Skidder! Yes! So shall we arrive at entente.”

His large womanish eyes swept the room. Suddenly they were arrested by a photograph of Shotwell Junior–in a silver frame–the only ornament, as yet, in the little drawing room.

And instantly, within Angelo Puma, the venomous instinct was aroused to do injury where it might be done safely and without suspicion of intent.

“Ah,” he exclaimed gaily, “my friend, Mr. Shotwell! It is from him, Miss Dumont, you have purchase this so beautiful residence!”

He bent to salute with a fanciful inclination the photograph of the man who had spoken so contemptuously of him the evening previous.

“Mr. Shotwell also adores gaiety,” he said laughingly. “Last night I beheld him at the Palace of Mirrors–and with an attractive young lady of your club, Miss Dumont–the charming young Russian lady with whom you came once to pay me the rent–” He kissed his hand in an ecstasy of recollection. “So beautiful a young lady! So gay were they in their box! Ah, youth! youth! Ah, the happiness and folly when laughter bubbles in our wine!–the magic wine of youth!”

He took his leave, moving lightly to the door, almost grotesque in his elaborate evolutions and adieux.

Palla went slowly upstairs.

The evening paper lay on a table in the living room. She unfolded it mechanically; looked at it but saw no print, merely an unsteady haze of greyish tint on which she could not seem to concentrate.

Marya and Jim … together… That was the night he went away angry… The night he told her he had gone directly home… But it couldn’t have been… He couldn’t have lied…

She strove to recollect as she sat there staring at the newspaper… What was it that beast had said about it?.. Of course–last night!.. Marya and Jim had been together last night… But where was Vanya?.. Oh, yes… Last night Vanya was away … in Baltimore.

The paper dropped to her lap; she sat looking straight ahead of her.

What had so shocked her then about Jim and Marya being together? True, she had not supposed them to be on such terms–had not even thought about it…

Yes, she had thought about it, scarcely conscious of her own indefinable uneasiness–a memory, perhaps, of that evening when the Russian girl had been at little pains to disguise her interest in this man. And Palla had noticed it–noticed that Marya was seated too near him–noticed that, and the subtle attitude of provocation, and the stealthy evolution of that occult sorcery which one woman instantly divines in another and finds slightly revolting.

Was it merely that memory which had been evoked when Puma’s laughing revelation so oddly chilled her?–the suspected and discovered predilection of this Russian girl for Jim? Or was it something else, something deeper, some sudden and more profound illumination which revealed to her that, in the depths of her, she was afraid?

Afraid? Afraid of what?

Her charming young head sank; the brown eyes stared at the floor.

She was beginning to understand what had chilled her, what she had unconsciously been afraid of–her own creed!– when applied to another woman.

And this was the second time that this creed of hers had risen to confront her, and the second time she had gazed at it, chilled by fear: once, when she had waited for Ilse to return; and now once again.

For now she began to comprehend how ruthless that creed could become when professed by such a girl as Marya Lanois.

She was still seated there when Marya came in, her tiger-red hair in fascinating disorder from the wind, her skin fairly breathing the warm fragrance of exotic youth.

“My Palla! How pale you seem!” she exclaimed, embracing her. “You are quite well? Really? Then I am reassured!”

She went to the mirror and tucked in a burnished strand or two of hair.

“These Chicago ladies–they have not arrived, I see. Am I then so early? For I see that Ilse is not yet here–”

“It is only a quarter to eight,” said Palla, smiling; but the brown eyes were calmly measuring this lithe and warm and lovely thing with green eyes–measuring it intently–taking its measure–taking, for the first time in her life, her measure of any woman.

“Was Vanya’s concert a great success?” she asked.

“Vanya has not yet returned.” She shrugged. “There was nothing in New York papers.”

“I suppose you were very nervous last night,” said Palla.