He looked at her doubtingly.
"After all," she continued, "can't you see that I have come here to ask you one question? You are different from the people I have known intimately and the people with whom I have been brought up, different from my husband. You know what my life has been. I have told you just now that the great doubt has come to me within the last few days. Won't you tell me what I want to know? Is there anything better, anything greater, anything more wonderful in life than these things which I have known, these ambitions, this social struggle? Tell me, Julien, is there anything else? Can you tell me how and where to find it?"
Once more her fingers had crept out of her muff.
Her hands were upon his shoulders, she seemed to be drawing him to her. Julien kissed her lightly on the forehead.
"For you, my dear Mabel," he decided, "I should say that there was nothing better. A leopard cannot change its spots. The life into which you have been brought and for which you have qualified so admirably, is the only life which would suit you. If you fancy sometimes in your dreams, or in your waking hours, that you hear cries and calls from another country, don't listen to them. You would never be happy outside the world you know of. You see, one who has made such a failure of life himself is yet well able to advise. Forgive me."
The telephone on his writing table was ringing. He turned aside to answer it. It was a question regarding the whereabouts of some papers at the office and it took him a few minutes to explain. When he set the receiver back and turned around, he was alone. There was nothing to remind him of her visit but a bunch of violets which seemed to have fallen from her muff, and the faint perfume from them. He took them up, smelt them for a moment, and flung them lightly into the hearth. Then he touched his bell.
"My hat, stick and gloves, Richards," he ordered. "Bring my things to
Charing-Cross at half-past eight. Have them registered only to
Boulogne. You understand?"
"Perfectly, sir," the man replied.
Julien glanced once more around his sitting-room. The little bunch of violets was smouldering upon the hearth. In a sense they seemed to him symbolical.
"Kendricks is right," he muttered. "It is the women who play the devil with our lives!"