She was perfectly right. Leah Pentland was a bad woman mainly because she had been looked after too carefully. It required upheavals to bring the possible best out of her. She had behaved unscrupulously and basely in dealing with the insurance fraud, because that was the sole adventure which had come her way. But had the adventure been heroic and noble, she would have enjoyed it quite as much and would have struggled quite as bravely. The reckless way in which she pulled the whiskers of Death, when throned on her motor-car, was characteristic of the woman. Given danger, and she blossomed into a heroine, good or bad as circumstances served. At heart she was no vapid society woman, and her fiery pursuit of aimless pleasures merely showed her restless and masculine temperament. Danger braced her. At times, during her first taste of it, she had certainly given way from overstrained nerves; but now she was steeled to the worst that could happen, blooded to the open trail, baptised in unholy fire. If Katinka and Demetrius returned to London to give battle she was certain, absolutely certain, that she could beat them single-handed. Katinka she felt was the more dangerous of the two. Well, let her come, let him come, and victory be to the self-confident. Leah was so sure of her triumph that she did not even cast a thought to her hard-worked fetish. All the same, she kept the peacock's feather constantly in her pocket.
"Jim," said the Duchess that night, after a tête-à-tête dinner, when the pair reached the coffee stage, "let us sell up, drop our rank, and go to Canada."
The Duke stared, as well he might. "Good Lord!"
"Pooh! Why do you not say damn, as I feel inclined to do?"
Jim still stared with infantile blue eyes. "You say such queer things," he objected, fishing for a cigar.
"I should like to do them. Oh, why wasn't I born a real live man. I should have lived--lived--lived."
"Well," said Jim, stolidly clipping his weed, "you live now, don't you?"
"In a satin-lined, rose-wood jewel-box, if you call that living."
"I see what you mean," confessed the Duke, lighting up. "Same here. I was ever so much jollier aboard that dirty tramp. I slugged one of the crew--a Finn, he was--a hulking Finn, who thought I was a world-crawler, an' no man. They carried him away in bits," finished Jim, with the battle-light in his blue eyes.
Leah looked at him curiously. "Jim, I really believe that we might understand one another. You and I are meant to be pals, and not a conventional man and wife. If you were only a backwoodsman I should adore you."