Once more Feo turned to look at Lola, leaning forward, and for a moment something flooded her eyes that was like blood, and a rush of unformed words of blasphemous anger crowded to her lips. With distended nostrils and widening fingers, she took on the appearance, briefly, of a figure, half man, half woman, stirred to its vitals with a desire to kill in punishment of treachery, suffering under the sort of humiliation that makes pride collapse like a toy balloon. And then a sense of humor came to the rescue. She sprang to her feet and burst into peal after peal of laughter so loud and irresistible and prolonged, that it brought on physical weakness and streaming tears. Finally, standing in her favorite place with her back to the fireplace, dabbing her eyes and steadying her voice, she began to talk huskily, with anger, and sarcasm, and looseness, puncturing her sometimes pedantic choice of words with one that was appropriate to a cab driver.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said, “Lola—purring little Lola, and in those clothes, too! I don’t mind confessing that I would never have believed it possible. I mean for you to have had the courage to aim so high. It’s easy to understand his end of it. The greater the ascetic, the smaller the distance to fall. Ha!—And you, you busy patriot, you earnest, self-confident young Lochinvar, if only I could make clear to you the whole ludicrous aspect of this bitter farce, this mordant slice of satire. You wouldn’t enjoy it, because you’re a hero-worshipper, with one foot in the Albert period. And in any case I can’t let you into it because my inherited instinct of sportsmanship is with me still, even in this. And so you’ll miss the point of the orgy of laughter that gave me the stitch. But I don’t mind telling you that it’s a scream, and would make a lovely chapter in the history of statesmen’s love affairs.”
That Fallaray should have turned from her to pick up this bourgeois little person, a servant in his house,—that was what rankled, in spite of her saying that she understood his end of it. Good God!
But to Lytham, who knew Lola as Madame de Brézé, and had found her to be willing to make a great sacrifice for love, the inner meaning of Feo’s outburst was lost. He told himself, as he had often done before, that Feo was an extraordinary creature, queer and erotic, and came back to the main road bluntly.
“May I ask you to be so kind as to tell me,” he said, “what answer you gave to Mr. Fallaray when he asked you to give him a divorce? A great deal depends upon that.”
“You mean because of his career and the success of your political plans?”
“Yes.”
“And why do you want to know, pray?” Feo shot the question at Lola.
“Because of Mr. Fallaray’s career,” Lola replied simply, “and the success of these political plans.”
But this was something much too large to be swallowed, much too good to be true. Regarding Lola as a deceitful minx, a most cunning little schemer, Feo took the liberty to disbelieve this statement utterly, although on the face of it Lola appeared to have thrown in her lot with Lytham. Why?—What was she up to now?—An impish desire to keep these two on tenterhooks and get a little fun out of all this—it was the only thing that she could get—suddenly seized Feo strongly. Here was a gorgeous chance for drama. Here was an epoch-making opportunity unexpectedly to force Lytham and the young vamp, as she called her, to ask Fallaray himself for an answer to this question, and watch the scene. It was probably the only opportunity to satisfy an avid curiosity to see how Fallaray would behave when faced with his “affinity,” and find out what game the girl who had been her servant was playing. This high-faluting attitude of Lola’s was all nonsense, of course. She had caught Fallaray with her extraordinary sexiness and meant to cling to him like a limpet. To become the second Mrs. Fallaray was naturally the acme of her ambition, even although she succeeded to a man who must place himself on the shelf in order to indulge in an amorous adventure. A great idea! But it would have to be carried out carefully, so that no inkling of it might escape.