VII
Sometimes the brain plays a trick upon you. In the midst of your everyday life you have a vivid yet elusive recollection of a past which is strange to you. You see yourself in circumstances and in a setting wholly unfamiliar. Like a flash it comes and goes; as swiftly as the shutter of a camera falls. Flick! It is gone and you can recall no incident upon which you can reconstruct the vision of the time-fraction. Beryl saw herself as she had been before she came upon a shabby gray-haired man studying the wallpaper in the hall of Dr. Merville's house. Yet she could never fix an impression. If the change of her outlook had been gradual, she might have traced back step by step. But it had been violent: catastrophic. And this bewildering truth appeared: that there had been no change so far as Ronnie was concerned. He had not altered in any degree her aspect of life. It worried her that it should be so. But there it was.
She had a wire from her father the next morning to say that he was returning at once. Dr. Merville had seen certain comments in the newspaper and was taking the next train to Paris.
She did not go to the station to meet him and was not in the house when he arrived. Even in the days that followed she saw little of him, for he seemed to have pressing business which kept him either at Steppe's office or Steppe's house. One night she went to dinner there. It was a meal remarkable for one circumstance. Although Sault was coming up for trial the following week, they did not speak of him. It was as though he were already passed from the world. She was tempted once to raise his name, but refrained. Discussion would be profitless, for they would only expose the old platitudes and present the conventional gestures.
In the car as they drove home the doctor was spuriously cheerful. His lighter manner generally amused Beryl; now her suspicions were aroused, for of late, her father's laborious good humor generally preceded a request for some concession on her part.
It was not until she was saying good night that he revealed the nature of his request.
"Don't you think it would be a good idea if you cut your engagement as short as possible, dear?" he asked with an effort to appear casual. "Steppe doesn't want a big wedding—one before the civil authorities with a few close friends to lunch afterwards—"
"You mean he wants to marry at once?"
"Well—not at once, but—er—er—in a week or so. Personally, I think it is an excellent scheme. Say in a month—"
"No, no!" she was vehement in her objection, "not in a month. I must have more time. I'm very sorry, father, if I am upsetting your plans."