There was a silence. Ned Blackborough was telling himself he was a fool.
"I shall put out the light if you insist on trying to read a bad French novel instead of speaking to me," he said. "There!--" the click of the electric button sounded clear. "It's much nicer with the firelight. Give that thing to me."
"Bad French novel," she echoed. "Why do you read it if it is bad? I wouldn't."
"All people are not perfect," he said recklessly. "Most of us--except you--have a bad side. I often wonder what you would say if I were to show you mine?"
"You couldn't," she said softly.
He had literally to harden his heart before he could go on, and then he had to double back. "It--it isn't a bad book after all," he went on turning the leaves idly, "it is only real life. I'll tell you the story if you like. Of course it is about a woman, and a man, and--and a husband--the old story that is always cropping up in the world, so the book's no good." He threw it aside in sudden impulse upon the table, and knelt down beside her. "Aura," he said passionately, "you and I know the beginning of the story well. Why should we try and escape from the ending of it? Oh! for God's sake, child, don't look like that!"
She had sprung up and was glancing down at the white shimmering folds of her gown in absolute horror.
"It is the dress," she muttered. "It is not me--it is not you, Ned--oh Ned, it can't be you--it is the dress--I will go home--I must go home----"
"Aura!" he cried, but she eluded him and was out in the wide lit corridor ere he could even ask her to be calm--to forgive him--to forget. He glanced after her for a moment; then with a curse at himself closed the door and sat down moodily before the fire. What was the good?
Between the palms, the roses, the endless flowers and curtains of the corridor were many a cosy corner, many a prepared nook where men and women in the intervals between the dances sought seclusion and love-making, more or less casual according to the taste of the makers--and where passion, doubtless, had gone further than Ned's brief outburst.