She sent out an excited laugh and flung up her hand as though to welcome a brain wave. Her amazing resilience stood her in good stead in this crisis of her life,—to say nothing of her courage and queer sense of humor. Her blood began to move again. Fed up with decadence, she would plump whole-heartedly for usefulness now, be normal, go to work, get into the good books of George Lytham and his party, surprise Fallaray by her sudden allegiance to his cause and to him, and gradually break down the door that she had slammed in his face.
“I’ll let my hair grow,” she continued gayly, working the vein that was to rescue her from despondency and failure with pathetic eagerness.
“I’ll chuck eccentric clothes. I’ll turn up slang and blasphemy. I’ll teach myself manners and the language of old political hens. I’ll keep brilliance within speed limits. Yes, I’ll do all that if I have to work like a coolie. And I’ll tell you what else I’ll do. I’ll bet you a thousand pounds to sixpence that before the end of the year I’ll be the wife—I said the wife, Georgie—of the next Prime Minister. Will you take it?”
She drew up short, alight and excited, her foot already on the beginning of the new road, and paused for a reply.
Georgie stretched like a young Angora cat and yawned with perfect frankness.
“I’ll take whatever I can get, Feo,” she said. “But what the devil are you talking about? I haven’t heard a blessed word.”
And Feo’s laugh must have carried into Bond Street.
III
And when Georgie had transferred herself from the many-cushioned divan to her extremely smart car, in which, with an expressionless face and a mind as calm as a cheese, she was going to drive to Hurlingham to be present at, rather than to watch, the polo, Feo went upstairs.
She felt that she must walk, and walk quickly, in an endeavor to keep up with her new line of thought, at the end of which she saw, more and more clearly, a most worth-while goal. Before she could arrive at this, she could see a vista of bunkers ahead of her to negotiate which all her gifts of intrigue would have, happily, to be exercised. To give interest and excitement to her plan of becoming Fallaray’s wife in fact, as well as by law, she required bunkers and needed difficulties. The more the merrier. She knew that, at present, Fallaray was as far away from her as though he were at the North Pole,—and as cold. She was dead certain of the fact that she had been of no more account to him, from the first few hours of their outrageous honeymoon, than a piece of furniture in one of the rooms in his house of which he never made use. That being so, she could see the constant and cunning employment of the brains that she had allowed to lie fallow through all her rudimentary rioting,—brains that she possessed in abundance, far above the average. In the use of these lay her salvation, her one chance to swing herself out of the great disappointment and its subsequent loose-endedness which had been brought about by Arrowsmith’s sudden deflection. Her passionate desire for this man was not going easily to die. She knew that. Her dreams would be filled with him for a considerable time, of course. She realized, also, looking at that uncompleted episode with blunt honesty, that, but for him, she would still be playing the fool, giving herself and her gifts to the entertainment of all the half-witted members of the gang. To the fastidious Arrowsmith and her unrequited love she owed her sudden determination to make herself useful to Fallaray and finally to become, moving Heaven and earth in the process, his wife. This was the paradoxical way in which her curious mind worked. No tears and lamentations for her. She had no use for them. On the contrary, she had courage and pride, and by setting herself the most difficult task that she could possibly have chosen, two things would result,—her sense of adventure would be gratified to the hilt and Arrowsmith shown the stuff of which she was made.