“What will you do?” Violet repeated.
From afar the question floated, descended, trod among the tender places of Leilah’s soul. At the pain of it she winced. “God help me, I do not know.”
Violet, cocking an eye again, insinuated: “Let me take a hand.” She paused, then, for clincher, threw out: “He dines here to-morrow.”
“Here!” Leilah exclaimed, half rising, fearful now that at any moment he might appear. “Here! With you?”
Violet nodded. “Why yes. Why not? If I can’t confess you, perhaps I can him. At any rate I can try. You can’t blame me for wanting to, either. You abandoned him on your honeymoon. You won’t tell me why and he says he don’t know. But he must suspect. He must have concluded that you left him for this, that or the other. I want to find out what his this, that and the other are and then make my own selection. It is true he did say that it was because of Barouffski. But that’s all gammon. You never saw Barouffski until you got here. There is something else and what that is I want to find out. No, you can’t blame me. It is the instinct of self-preservation. If I don’t get at the bottom of it soon, I shall simply go mad.”
A laugh, clear and musical, wound up the lady’s chatter. She had no more idea of going mad than she had of jumping out of the window. But she wanted to know and that was only human.
But now, Leilah, who a moment before had half risen, stood up. “Violet, I am not well, you must let me go. Yes,” she added as the lady remarked that on the morrow she might appear in the rue de la Pompe. “Yes, yes.”
She would have said yes to anything. Hurriedly she got away.
Without the motor waited.
“Home,” she told the groom.