At that moment a board creaked in the corridor, and then came a step outside the door.
My blood rushed up to my head. But it was not of myself I thought; it was of the treaty. If I were to be caught here, alone with the dead man, my hands and clothing stained with his blood, I should be arrested. The treaty must not be found on me. Yet I must hide it, save it. I made a dash for the window, and once outside, standing on the narrow balcony, I threw the candle-end into the room, aiming for the fire-place. Faint starlight, sifting through heavy clouds, showed me a row of small flower-pots standing in a wooden box. Hastily I wrapped the treaty in a towel which hung over the iron railing, lifted out two of the flower-pots (in which the plants were dead and dry), laid the flat parcel I had made in the bottom of the box, and replaced the pots to cover and conceal it. Then I walked back into the room again. A hand, fumbling at the handle of the door, pushed it open with a faint creaking of the hinges. Then the light of a dark lantern flashed.
DIANA FORREST’S PART
CHAPTER XIV
DIANA TAKES A MIDNIGHT DRIVE
Some people apparently understand how to be unhappy gracefully, as if it were a kind of fine art. I don’t. It seems too bad to be true that I should be unhappy, and as if I must wake up to find that it was only a bad dream.
I suppose I’ve been spoiled a good deal all my life. Everybody has been kind to me, and tried to do things for my pleasure, just as I have for them; and I have taken things for granted—except, of course, with Lisa. But Lisa is different—different from everyone else in the world. I have never expected anything from her, as I have from others. All I’ve wanted was to make her as happy as such a poor, little, piteous creature could be, and to teach myself never to mind anything that she might say or do.
But Ivor—to be disappointed in him, to be made miserable by him! I didn’t know it was possible to suffer as I suffered that day he went off and left me standing in the railway-station. I didn’t dream then of going to Paris. If anybody had told me I would go, I should have said, “No, no, I will not.” And yet I did. I allowed myself to be persuaded. I tried to make myself think that it was to please Aunt Lilian; but down underneath I knew all the time it wasn’t that, really. It was because I couldn’t bear to do the things I’m accustomed to doing every day. I felt as if I should cry, or scream, or do something ridiculous and awful unless there were a change of some sort—any change, but if possible some novelty and excitement, with people talking to me every minute.
Perhaps, too, there was an attraction for me in the thought that I would be in Paris while Ivor was there. I kept reminding myself on the boat and the train that nothing good could happen; that Ivor and I could never be as we had been before; that it was all over between us for ever and ever, and through his fault. But, there at the bottom was the thought that I might have done him an injustice, because he had begged me to trust him, and I wouldn’t. Just suppose—something in myself kept on saying—that we should by mere chance meet in Paris, and he should be able to prove that he hadn’t come for Maxine de Renzie’s sake! It would be too glorious. I should begin to live again—for already I’d found out that life without loving and trusting Ivor wasn’t life at all.
He couldn’t think I had followed him, even if he did see me in Paris, because I would be with my Aunt and Uncle, and Lord Robert West; and I made up my mind to be very nice to Lord Bob, much nicer than I ever had been, if Ivor happened to run across us anywhere.
Then that very thing did happen, in the strangest and most unexpected way, but instead of being happier for seeing him, I was ten times more unhappy than before—for now the misery had no gleam of hope shining through its blackness.