"How dare she speak to me like that!" was her furious thought. "As if Luce has any right over me or my health!" She could have struck the leering smile from the woman's face; she turned away trembling with anger to her dressing-table.
"So you knew all the time about Luce and me being married?" she said in a toneless voice, when she had presently mastered herself.
"Heavenly me! yes, and I knew it would all work out and come right in the end. But I think you ought to wear your wedding-ring now, Poppy.... All right, all right, you needn't look at me like a mal-meit!... I'm going now ... I wouldn't stop with you another minute when you look like that ... you and Luce are a nice pair for temper ... surely to goodness one would think all would be peace and love now—" The door was closed and locked on her and she was obliged to continue her soliloquy on the stairs.
An hour later found Poppy letting herself in at the double white gates of Mrs. Portal's garden. It was neither the first nor last Friday in the month, nor yet Sunday afternoon; but she had not come for society. She came because she must; because of her bitter need of some word concerning the man she loved.
The house was a big, red-brick villa, with many verandahs and no pretentious, except to comfort. An English maid, in a French cap and apron, showed her into a drawing-room that was full of the scent of flowers, with open windows and drawn shades. Almost immediately Mrs. Portal blew into the room like a fresh wind, seized her hands, and shook them warmly.
"I knew you would come to-day," she said. "I dreamed of you last night. Poppy, I have a feeling that you and I are going to be mixed up in each other's lives somehow."
A creature of moods and impulses herself, Poppy thoroughly understood this greeting, and it warmed her sad and lonely spirit gratefully; she let herself be beguiled to the fireside of Clementine Portal's friendship. Before she realised it, they were seated together in a deep lounge just big enough for two people, and a pile of cushions with cool, dull-toned surfaces, talking like friends of long standing. Mrs. Portal was quite in the dark as to who the girl was, but that did not bother her at all, and her remarks contained no shadow of a question. It was enough that she "had a feeling about her," and had dreamed of her and believed in her.
To ordinary persons these might not seem very cogent reasons; but Clementine Portal was in no sense ordinary. Her judgment concerning things in general, and women in particular, was both keen and sound; but she never allowed it to interfere with her inspirations, which she considered far safer. Apparently intensely practical and conventional, she was, in reality, a woman who lived the most important part of her life in a hidden world. She had the seeing-eye and the hearing-ear for things that went unnoted by the every-day man and woman. Being Irish, she was packed full of superstition, but, fortunately, a strong vein of common sense counterbalanced it. As for her humour, that most fatal gift in a woman, it sometimes resembled a fine blue flame, that scorched everything in reach; and sometimes, to the consternation of the conventional, was the rollicking wit of a fat and jolly Irish priest addicted to the punch-bowl. She had a wonderful way of attracting confidences from people about the things they most cared for in life. In a little while Poppy had told her what she had never told to a living soul before—about her little book of songs—and her great ambitions as a writer. For some unknown reason the girl felt these ambitions very much alive in her that afternoon. Clementine Portal sat like a creature entranced, with her lips slightly apart. When Poppy had given her, upon urgent requesting—a halting, eloquent outline of her novel, Clem said:
"I know it will be good.... I can feel that it will have big bits of open space like the veldt in it, with new sorts of trees growing by the wayside as one passes along.... I hate the modern woman's book, because it always makes me gasp for air. It is too full of the fire that burns up all there is in life."