"Didn't you notice yourself at dinner last night? He hardly said five words to Rosamond. He seemed to take no notice of her."
Mrs Halward had observed correctly, but had made wrong deductions. Harry and Rosamond were meeting more frequently than ever, but nearly always in secrecy. If his wife suggested that Rosamond should be asked to one of her dinner-parties, Harry shrugged his shoulders and made some excuse. He lunched frequently at his club now, so his wife said, and she said what he had told her. As a matter of fact, he never lunched there at all. He took Rosamond to out-of-the-way restaurants where he would be unlikely to meet anybody he knew. Sometimes they improvised a lunch in the studio together. No day passed that he did not see her, or, at any rate, hear from her. And there was no happiness for either of them. Elton hated lies and hated secrecy. Grace had never been jealous of Rosamond, but Rosamond was furiously jealous of Grace.
"I can see the end of this," said Rosamond one night when he had come late to the studio. "We cannot possibly go on like this. It is killing me. I cannot share you with another woman."
"I know, dear," said Elton. "The position is hateful. And it is all my fault. And what is to be the end of it?"
"Quite simple," said Rosamond. "I take something for my insomnia, you know. There will be an accident."
"You are not to say that, and you are not even to think about it. That will not be the end. I am going to take you away. We must face it. A little scandal, a change of name, and, in a year, it is all over. I shall be willing enough to live abroad. We will go to your beloved Sicily."
"Yes, to Taormina. Oh! but that would be too much happiness. That could never be."
But, there and then, they made their plans how it should be.
Even now, if there was a prospect of happiness for Rosamond, there seemed to Elton to be none for himself. He would have to leave Grace. It was against accepted ideas and against rules, but, none the less, he loved Grace. He could not have said which woman he loved more—Grace or Rosamond. They were so absolutely different—Grace with her suavity and Rosamond with her temperament—that no comparison was possible. Both seemed absolutely necessary to him, and he could not have both.