“I don’t know,” she said, “why I put that portrait there to-day... There’s a connection, I suppose, between it and one’s wasted youth. The portrait stands for waste... It is the sight of it that has set me thinking back.”
She crossed to the piano and lifted the frame as though her purpose were to remove it. Then, changing her mind, she set it again in its place, and came slowly back.
“I wonder what you think of my getting you here and depressing you with my reminiscences,” she said in a lighter tone. “It wasn’t my intention. I suppose it’s due to reaction following the shock of recent events. We’ll flee from gloomy subjects, shall we? ... Come out with me. I want to show you my garden...”
Whether it was owing to Mrs Lawless’ display of emotion, or the unexpected sight of the photograph in her room, or to both reasons combined, added to the strange new quality in her voice when she spoke of the portrait’s original, Julie conceived the idea that she too loved this man with the dominating personality,—the strangely aloof manner,—the air of quiet detachment that made him at once a figure attractive and unapproachable, so that women, while desirous of knowing him, hesitated to solicit an introduction. It was not strange that she should love him—that to Julie was a natural, almost an inevitable, consequence of knowing him—but it was incredible that he could remain indifferent to her regard. The only explanation she could arrive at was that he was ignorant of it. Julie understood at last the tragedy that occasionally looked out from Mrs Lawless’ beautiful eyes; and in her sympathy with her the pain at her own heart grew less. She had no thought of competing against this peerlessly lovely woman. It was unaccountable to her by the light of her new understanding that Lawless should have troubled to show any interest in her at all. She wondered whether, if she ever saw him again, she would find the courage to tell him the secret she had surprised...
That evening, after Julie had left her, Mrs Lawless took the portrait of Lawless from the piano, and sat with it in her hands examining it closely. She was wondering whether the woman he had gone away with now was the same woman he had wrecked his happiness for eight years ago—wondering in a quite impersonal, dulled sort of way. The thing was past remedying and altogether beyond her control. She remembered that in the past it had been the wound to her self-esteem she had felt the most bitterly. Her feelings had changed during the long years. She experienced little of the grief, the anger, the disgust that had moved her then. Her present sorrow was less a selfish emotion than sorrow for the man because of the waste he was making of life. She scarcely considered the woman outside her connection with Lawless, save, after the tragedy of the previous night, to be relieved that, since she was to influence him, she had removed him from other influences of a more actively dangerous nature. She was glad that he was out of Cape Town, otherwise she knew he would have been concerned in the affair that had cost one life and might yet cost another.
And while she sat there musing on these matters with the photograph in her hands, the door of the room opened, and to her astonishment Colonel Grey was announced. He followed quickly on his name, as though anticipating and anxious to prevent a refusal on her part to receive him, offering an apology for intruding on her as he entered.
Mrs Lawless laid the photograph face downwards on the sofa and rose to greet him. Her face expressed her surprise; his was grey and tired and haggard, and his blood-shot eyes looked like the eyes of a man who has not slept.
“I fear I have disturbed you,” he said. “I’m sorry to intrude, but I wish to see you.”
“You have disturbed me doing nothing,” she answered composedly. “I was wearied of my thoughts. Sit down and tell me what you wanted to see me for... Will you take anything?” she added, on a sudden thought, as he dropped wearily into a chair. “You look tired.”
“Thank you, no,” he answered. “I am less tired than worried. But I won’t distress you by going into that. I quite understand that the subject is painful to you, and for that reason I regret to inflict my company on you.”