Helen wondered why she had not seen her when she entered the dining room, for now she could almost hear her crackle. Yet she did not look up again in that direction. There was a man at the table with this woman, she knew; but she had been so startled by the native malice of those dark eyes that she had only a blurred impression of his back.
Suddenly there was a sound in this place where the confused murmur of many voices made a thousand sounds. It was the rich, rollicking laugh of a man, one high note quickly suppressed.
Helen stiffened, her hand flew to her breast as if she had received a mortal wound. This trumpeting note of mirth was as much a part of her experience as her husband’s kisses had been. Her lips tightened, her eyes wide with horror flew this way and that, scanning every face. Then they fell again upon the dark woman whom she had forgotten in this sudden anguish. Instantly she felt the red lash of this woman’s smile, as if she had reached across the space between them to strike a blow. There was contempt and recognition in the smoldering black eyes—no defiance, but triumph.
The man facing her at this table with his back to Helen caught it, flirted his head around to find the object of it—and looked straight into the eyes of his wife!
For one instant they held this silent interview with each other in that crowded room. Then the woman struck her hands together with a sharp, little smack, and let out a gale of laughter, too keen, too high in this decent place. Every head was turned toward her, every eye fell upon her in polite amazement. Still she laughed. And still George Cutter’s eyes followed his wife. For Helen had risen at the first note of that stinging laugh and had made her way blindly from the room.
“What happened?” asked a fat man, rolling a pop-eyed look across the table at his wife.
“I didn’t see anything,” she replied, taking her soup with the absorption of an innocent person.
“Who was the pale lady? Didn’t you see her going out?”
“A lot of people are coming in and going out,” his wife returned, skinning the bottom of her soup plate with her spoon.
“And there’s the one that did the laugh,” he said, nodding at the woman.