"No, you haven't met her," she assented. "But until you've met her, you won't rest; and after you've met her, you won't rest either.—And so you think I'm bewildering! You thought something else, which you didn't have the courage to put into words. Bewildering and dangerous—the most dangerous woman you'd ever met—that was what you meant."
He smiled with a shade of embarrassment. "I might have called you the most disconcerting woman; you're all of that. No man of sense, who valued his peace of mind, would tell any woman she was dangerous."
"I don't see why. Why shouldn't he? Do tell me. I shan't be offended." She leant forward, ab
sorbing him with her childish eyes, her lips parted with expectancy.
"Because——" Tabs checked himself while he studied the tantalizing innocence of her expression. He felt certain that he was going to say something irresistibly unwise. To gain time he looked away and commenced aimlessly stirring his cup. "Well, if you must have it, because to tell a woman that would be to tempt her to be dangerous."
"But I love to be tempted," she said eagerly; "temptation is the yeast of life." And then in a whisper, speaking less to him than to herself, "A woman knows that she's old when temptation ends."
Like ripples from a stone flung into water the poignancy of what she had implied rather than uttered, spread away with a commotion which grew ever fainter. They sat without change of posture at either end of the couch, she bending towards him, he gazing down into his cup as though by staring into it he could retain his grip on the conventions. There was no sound, save the rustling of live coals in the grate. Outside the window the toy boat floated, a symbol of men's and women's ineffectual childishness, always dreaming of adventures on which they never set sail. Tabs pondered the hidden profundity of her words. At last he believed that through her he understood himself. It wasn't youth that he or anybody coveted; it was the more supreme boon of not growing old. He had just arrived at this new self-knowledge when she spoke.
"To be tempted means that one's wanted—wanted dreadfully, so that it hurts. That's living—to be
wanted. Not to be wanted is worse than death. When you're dead, you're forgotten and you forget. To be forgotten and to remember is the end of all things. Not to be wanted when you're alive is to beat your flesh against the walls of a tomb. Lord Taborley, I know what you came for." He had set down his cup. She covered his bronzed hands with her own passionate white ones, overwhelming him with a rush of words. "You came to accuse me, to bribe me, to buy me. You didn't want to hear me; I was already condemned. Do you think I don't know what's said about my marriages? I know too well. But it isn't vanity that makes me want to be loved. It's so right to be loved. It isn't wickedness. It's the terror of not being loved—the same terror that makes you cling to Terry though she doesn't want you in return—— We all want to believe that we're wanted. It's human. Without that life's a blank. One can't face up—— And I——"
She tore her hands from him and buried her face, sobbing in the cushions.