And the upshot of it all was that I neither knew whether I was glad or sorry. For this is the selfishness of that great unselfishness of love, that we will give the whole world, our life if necessary, to the woman whom we worship, but the giving must be ours.
Yet that night I knew well enough whether I were glad or not, for that night, trying in vain to find the waters of forgetfulness in the finger-bowls on my supper-room table, I saw Clarissa herself.
It was all a lie! She had never returned to Dominica; and as I pieced together the story from what I had been told, from what I saw before me then, I grew sick at heart with a nameless apprehension.
Young Fennell was with her; there was also another man—a member no doubt of the Lyric Club—and the same woman to whom the story of Clarissa had been told that night almost a year before, when first there had been sown in my mind the seed of my adventure.
For some long minutes I was too amazed to do anything but watch them unperceived. Two bottles of champagne stood on the table, and one by one the five courses of the supper were placed before them. They all ate and drank as though it were the one essential meal of their day—all of them except Clarissa, who nibbled at her bread like a little mouse, only sipping from her glass lest they should fill it up again too soon. But in the laughing and the talking she was no exception to the rest. To all the popular tunes of the day they rapped with their forks in applause upon the table. It was just that type of partie carrée I had seen so often in those rooms; so often wondered at for the hollowness of the enjoyment it suggested. They would—had I not known them—have been just such a company of players as I am accustomed to watch in this one particular theatre of mine. But, being Clarissa, it was no play to me then. Every time she laughed, I felt it buffet in my face. Every time when with the others she tapped her fork upon the table, she might have been driving the prongs of it into my flesh. That she could find laughter with such men and women! That she could applaud that loathsome music, which only sensualizes the minds of those that hear it! All these thoughts burnt hot inside me, and yet I could do no more than stay and watch it to the end.
There was, moreover, in my mind the determination that I still had some questions to ask that young man before I let him out of my sight again. With that intention, therefore, I sat quietly in my seat. I had settled with myself that I would speak to him when they were all going out—contrive that he should remain behind, since, if there should be words between us, as was most likely, it should not in any way disgrace Clarissa.
In the first few moments I had thought it strange for it to be here that I should meet Clarissa again. But there was not so much strangeness in it after all. A man always returns to his old haunts. It is the instinct of the animal for its lair, the salmon for its pool. But though he had seen me there before, he little expected to see me there again.
It was with no little satisfaction that I noted his first glance of recognition and the look of consternation that followed it. He waited just a moment, thinking, doubtless, to hide from me the fact that he had seen me; then, leaning across the table, he whispered something into Clarissa's ear. With that same startled expression of the frightened bird, she looked across the room and her eyes met mine.
In that one sudden moment, I felt she was recalling every word I had said to her that morning on the cliffs at Ballysheen. For her eyes had no hatred in them now; only fear, the fear as when one is discovered and is ashamed. She tried to meet my look, and though in my eyes I felt there was showing all the affection I had so lately come to realize, yet still she failed. In a moment she was looking away again, forcing herself to talk to the man beside her as if the incident had passed completely from her mind.
Presently young Fennell leaned across the table and spoke to her once more, then rose and came down the room.