"That's healthy. Give her a piece of your mind, have a good row, and then make it up. But let me tell you, my dear boy, that she was horrified at the thought of that man coming up here, and she only refrained from telling you of the summons, so to speak, because she wanted to spare you any anxiety. There's no doubt in my mind that she's as much in love with you as you are with her.… You have none, I suppose?"
"None. Particularly lately. I hadn't told you, but I had intended, in a day or two, to ask you if you would let me have the camp for a few weeks. We intended to marry in Huntersville the day the rest of you went out."
Mr. Dinwiddie whistled. "No wonder she was furious at having her preliminary honeymoon disturbed. But if that is the case of course she'll return. You're more than welcome to the camp, and I'll send whatever you need from time to time. You've only to command me.… It makes it all the more comprehensible. Whatever it was that man said to her, she wanted to get over it by herself before coming back to the place where she had forgotten that Hohenhauers and politics existed. I could see how it was with her here. She looked exactly as she used to in the old days, and I don't doubt felt like it, too. No wonder she resented being forced back into the rôle of Madame Zattiany, or Gräfin—countess—as he calls her. You must let her thresh it out by herself."
"You believe she will come back."
"If that was your plan, I assuredly do. There isn't a spark of human affection between those two, and Mary never placed herself in any man's power. I am more and more inclined to believe that he appealed to her for help in his mission here, whatever it is—and it's not so difficult to guess—and that against her inclination and out of her love for Austria, she consented."
"Well, it's no use to speculate. There's the supper bell. I'll decide in the morning whether I go off for a tramp or not."
LVII
Clavering slept when he first went to bed, for he was healthily tired, but he awoke suddenly at midnight with body refreshed and mind abnormally clear. He knew that he would sleep no more that night, and he put on his trousers and coat over his pyjamas, thrust his feet into bedroom slippers and went out into the living-room. There he put a log on the fire and paced up and down, not unlike a tiger round its cage.
He felt as if black bats were flying about his brain, each charged with a different portent of disaster. Once more the unreality of the whole affair overwhelmed him. How could he have been so fatuous as to believe that he had really won such a woman? He remembered his first impression: that she was on a plane above, apart. They hadn't an interest in common, not even a memory that antedated their meeting a few short weeks ago. She had lived a life of which he knew nothing outside of European novels and memoirs. She had known nothing of any other world until he had introduced her to his friends, and he made no doubt that her interest in them was about as permanent as a highly original comedy on the stage would inspire. There was nothing, literally, between them but a mutual irresistible attraction, and that bond recognized so unerringly by both.