He had complimented her on the excellent likeness of Dwight Rush, whom he knew and liked, and remarked quite naturally that he might have sat for her a number of times. The dusky pink had mounted to her hair, but she had replied carelessly that Rush was "a common enough type."
Possibly Broderick would have forgotten the blush had it not have been for the swift change of expression in her eyes: a certain fear followed by a concentrated renitence; and at the same moment he had remembered that he had met Rush once or twice at the Crumleys' during the summer and thought him quite the favoured guest.
Driven only by a mild personal curiosity, he had asked her how she liked Rush and if she saw much of him; he recalled that she had answered with an elaboration of indifference that she hadn't seen him for ages and took no interest in him whatever.
Then Broderick had drawn her on to talk of Mrs. Balfame. Yes, in common with all Elsinore that counted, she admired Mrs. Balfame, although she believed that no one really knew her, that she unconsciously lived among the surfaces of her nature. Her face as she marched down the clubroom that day, and its curious sudden transformation on that other day at the Friday Club when her thoughts so plainly had drifted far from the platitudinous speakers, indicated to Miss Crumley's temperamental mind "depths and possibly tragic possibilities."
It was patent to Mr. Broderick's own mind that her suspicions had not lighted for a moment on the dead man's widow, but it also transpired in the course of the conversation that the young artist who had so "loved to sketch" the Star of Elsinore had suffered a long drop in personal enthusiasm. Pressed astutely, she had remarked that she guessed she was as broad-minded as anybody, especially since her year on the New York press, but she did not approve of married women claiming a right to share in the Great Game designed by Nature for the young of both sexes.
Then the story came out: Miss Crumley, afflicted with a headache something over a fortnight since, and enjoying the cool night air just behind her front gate, had seen Mrs. Balfame come out of Dr. Steuer's garden next door and meet Dwight Rush face to face. He had begged to be allowed to see her home.
Mrs. Balfame had lovely manners, she couldn't help being sweet unless she disliked a person, and no woman will elect to walk up a long dark avenue alone if a man offer to escort her.
Alys would have thought nothing of it—merely assumed that Rush, being a comparative newcomer, had caught at the chance to make a favourable impression on the leader of Elsinore society—(no, he was no snob, but that idea just came to her), if they had not crawled, yes, crawled all the way up the avenue.
Both were vigorous people with long legs; they could have covered the distance to the Balfame place in three minutes. They had been more than ten, and as they passed under the successive lamp posts she had noted the man's bent head, the woman's tilted back—as she gazed up into his eyes, no doubt.
"In this town," Miss Crumley had announced, "a woman is fast or she isn't. You know just where you are. There's a class that's sly about it, but somehow you get 'on' in time. Mrs. Balfame has stood for the highest and best. Mind you, I'm not saying that she ever saw Rush alone again, or cared a snap of her finger for him—or he for her. No doubt she felt, when the rare chance offered of taking a little flyer, that it was too good to miss. But she shouldn't have done it; that's the point. I don't like my idols to have feet of clay."