"You're not dying? Not in pain? What can I do?"
"No, no. Wait a little. Put me down; I must think."
He obeyed, settling her among the pillows with infinite tenderness. He dared not kiss her lest he disturb recovery, but he carefully drew the pins from her hair and smoothed out the thick, soft ripples. He had a vague recollection of reading somewhere that a woman's locks should be unbound when she swooned. It was in a novel, of course; still, it might be true. And there was one panacea that he knew!
Elsie did not open her eyes, but she heard him rise and hurry into the other room. The giddiness had left her now, and she could think.
Of course she had recognized Mike's portrait of Lucille Masterson. She had seen the other woman, lovely, imperious in assured beauty; almost had breathed the rich odor of her Essence Enivrante—which was not French at all, but distilled in an upper room on Forty-second street where individual perfumes were composed for those who could pay well. Anthony had gone to her, the day after Christmas. The day after that Christmas! Lying there, Elsie recalled how she and Anthony had gone together to church in Yuletide mood and knelt hand in hand in the bare little pew as simply as children: "because they had found each other." And then their first Christmas dinner in their holly-decked house, when the puppy had sat in rolypoly unsteadiness on Anthony's knee, regaled with food that should have slain him, while she laughed and remonstrated and abetted the crime. The day after all that, the day after he had given her the garnet love-ring, Anthony had gone to Mrs. Masterson? Her reason cried out against the absurdity. Yet, he had gone.
The clink of china hurriedly moved in the next room had ceased. Adriance came to the bedside, leaning over to slip his arm carefully under the pillow and raise the girl's head. In his other hand he held a cup of hot tea, the only medicine he knew.
All his wife's heart melted toward him in his helpless helpfulness. Suddenly she remembered that he had come back to her from that meeting. He had seen the invincible Lucille, yet had returned to glorious content with his wife. The ordeal she long had foreseen and dreaded was over. She opened her eyes and looked up at him quietly.
He looked like a man who had been ill, and his gaze devoured her, enfolded her.
"What was it?" he asked unsteadily. "What is it?"
"Anthony, why did you not tell me that you met Mrs. Masterson?" she put her quiet question. "Why did you leave me to hear it from Michael?"