“I hope we are not too late for tea,” he remarked, glancing around the room.
Adelaide Fortress rang the bell. I smiled faintly at a certain irony in the thought called up by his question. I had shaken hands with the girl unwillingly. We were to be enemies. I was sure of that, and I preferred open warfare.
Tea was brought in, and a little general conversation was started, in which I took no part. Presently he came over to my side. The other two were talking, the girl was relating some of her South American experiences to Adelaide Fortress, who was leaning back amongst the shadows.
“What made you bring her here,” I asked, softly.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Why not? It is better to be on friendly terms with her. We know then what she is going to do.”
“So you appear to think,” I remarked, with some emphasis. “You seem to be progressing wonderfully. I congratulate you.”
He laughed in my face.
“Oh, she is not at all uninteresting,” he declared. “If you had seen as much of her as I have the last few days you would find her enchanting.”
I looked at her contemplatively. Her little person was almost lost in a huge sealskin coat, and her ungloved hands were blazing with diamonds. As she talked her white teeth (she had beautiful teeth) gleamed, and her black eyes flashed in their sallow setting. She was an odd-looking creature. Every now and then she darted swift, anxious glances towards us, once she paused and made a strenuous effort to overhear what we were saying. She need not have troubled herself. I barely heard what Bruce Deville was saying to me; my answers to him were purely mechanical. I was scarcely conscious whether it was indeed I who was sitting there within a few yards of that pale-faced, composed woman from whose lips only a few minutes ago I had heard that story which seemed to me yet like a dark, shadowy nightmare. The echoes of her passionate words seemed still lingering around the dimly lit room. Once or twice I raised my hand to my temples—my head was reeling. At last I could bear it no longer. The irony of small talk was too bitter. A sense of suffocation came over me. I rose to my feet and made my excuses.