CHAPTER XXIV
NEAERA AGAIN
Neaera's attempt on Chairo had proved a humiliating failure, and when she confronted Lydia her cheeks were flushed, not with success as might have been imagined, but with the effort to escape without disgrace from a situation for which she had no one to thank or blame but herself. Chairo had certainly at one time been attracted by Neaera beyond the limits of mere companionship, but he had not taken long to discover that the glances that tended to bewitch him were no less bewitchingly turned on others, and he soon put Neaera where she deserved in his acquaintance.
She was extremely useful to him in his political plans and on the staff of "Liberty"; and although he was dimly conscious that Neaera would to the end—at every moment that the strain of the actual work was relieved—endeavor to bring into their intimacy the element of coquetry of which she was a past master, Chairo treated this disposition with something of the amused sense of her charm that would be elicited by a pet animal. And this willingness to be amused by her Neaera understood to mean a tribute to her attractiveness that might on a suitable occasion lead to an exchange of vows at the altar of matrimony.
But she little understood Chairo when she attempted to force the occasion of their meeting at Masters's into a channel so opposite to his present disposition. When he entered the room where Neaera awaited him the lines in his face and the fatigue in his eye elicited from Neaera an ejaculation in which, strange to say, there was some real sincerity. She was truly sorry for him, and she was woman enough to guess that the weary face before her was due to no mere political reverses, for the face was not only that of a tired man, it was also that of a man who had been chastened. She was restive under the thought that the chastening influence could be his love for Lydia, and the problem before her grew complicated when she guessed how difficult it would be for her to elicit from Chairo any word that could sting the woman whom to that particular end she had secreted in the adjoining room. Then, too, although she was mistress of her own voice, she was not mistress of Chairo's, and the possibility that Lydia might close her ears was one that did not enter within the scope of Neaera's imagination.
After having expressed her sympathy for Chairo and found that it elicited little or no response from him, but, on the contrary, that he was eager to know the reason of her presence in New York and of her message to him, she launched upon a highly imaginative account of her relations to Masters, and with her command of humor very soon got Chairo laughing over the success with which, according to her story, she had pulled the wool over Masters's eyes. Chairo had no reason to love Masters, and he had long ceased to regard Neaera as a responsible person; the immorality of her proceeding affected him, therefore, no more than if he had observed it in a monkey or a cat.
Neaera told her story in words so rapid and a voice so low that Lydia could hardly have understood it had she tried, and Neaera felt that she had scored a point when she had made Chairo laugh. Then, anticipating the effect of silence on Lydia, she had handed Chairo some selected passages from Masters's letters to read, and as Chairo burst again into laughter over certain passages in them, Neaera began to feel she might venture farther. Laughter, especially over an unrighteous matter, tends to make all righteousness seem superfluous, but when Neaera got near Chairo, in a pretense of reading over his shoulder, a very slight and almost unconscious movement of Chairo away from her made her understand that any further effort in this direction would be a mistake.
So Neaera set herself to discussing very seriously the situation with Chairo, assured him that she was prepared to sacrifice herself, and with a tear in her eye admitted to him, almost in a whisper, that she had tampered with his carriage.