“The same old thing, was it? But how antiquated you are! Really it is piteous. There are no secrets any more. All that sort of thing went out with hoopskirts. Private life which used to be a sealed book has become an open newspaper. It is plain for instance, plain to everybody, plain as a pikestaff that you are still in love with Verplank. What you left him for the Lord in his infinite wisdom and mercy only knows. That is a secret certainly but only because you choose to make it one. It is no secret to me though that you are dying to go back to him. But don’t you know you can’t? Don’t you know it? Don’t you know that you can’t budge an inch until you have shipped Barouffski? Now how are you going to do that? Tell me.”
Leilah made a pass with a hand. It was as though, in some rite known but to her, she were consulting the lap of the invisible gods and, in it, the equally invisible future.
“Then I will tell you. You have got to buy him off. Listen to this. I will pack Silverstairs straight to the Embassy. There he will get all the law and most of the prophets. Meanwhile promise that you’ll keep your head.”
“I will try,” Leilah, mechanically, her thoughts afar, replied.
“There!” Violet exclaimed. “That’s right. When there is a divorce in the air it’s so much better to try than to be tried.”
At the inane jest she laughed, embraced her friend. In a moment she had gone, distributing as she went a faint, sweet smell of orris.
Leilah who had risen moved to the window and looked out at the gate through which Verplank would come. It was as she had said: She did not know what to believe and mutely for a moment she prayed for guidance.
“O, Lords of Karma, Watchers of the Seven Spheres, grant me so to live that, hereafter, I may say, I have harmed no heart, I have made no one weep. Out of your infinite bounty grant that somewhere, sometime, there may be peace to Gulian’s soul and mine.”
The prayer concluded she felt securer. Momentarily the cancer of anxiety had ceased to gnaw, the fascination of fear had departed. In the respite she turned to the clock. It was nearly five and she rang for one of her women.