“Now I often wonder,” he said, conscious of, but indifferent to, the knowledge that he and the brilliant person beside him were objects of general attention—“I often wonder, when I look at a gathering like this, how many undiscovered crimes there are playing about among us. They never do tell—or shall I say, we never do tell?”
All day, she knew not why, Hylda had been nervous and excited. Without reason his words startled her. Now there flashed before her eyes a room in a Palace at Cairo, and a man lying dead before her. The light slowly faded out of her eyes, leaving them almost lustreless, but her face was calm, and the smile on her lips stayed. She fanned herself slowly, and answered nonchalantly: “Crime is a word of many meanings. I read in the papers of political crimes—it is a common phrase; yet the criminals appear to go unpunished.”
“There you are wrong,” he answered cynically. “The punishment is, that political virtue goes unrewarded, and in due course crime is the only refuge to most. Yet in politics the temptation to be virtuous is great.”
She laughed now with a sense of relief. The intellectual stimulant had brought back the light to her face. “How is it, then, with you—inveterate habit or the strain of the ages? For they say you have not had your due reward.”
He smiled grimly. “Ah, no, with me virtue is the act of an inquiring mind—to discover where it will lead me. I began with political crime—I was understood! I practise political virtue: it embarrasses the world, it fogs them, it seems original, because so unnecessary. Mine is the scientific life. Experiment in old substances gives new—well, say, new precipitations. But you are scientific, too. You have a laboratory, and have much to do—with retorts.”
“No, you are thinking of my husband. The laboratory is his.”
“But the retorts are yours.”
“The precipitations are his.”
“Ah, well, at least you help him to fuse the constituents!... But now, be quite confidential to an old man who has experimented too. Is your husband really an amateur scientist, or is he a scientific amateur? Is it a pose or a taste? I fiddled once—and wrote sonnets; one was a pose, the other a taste.”
It was mere persiflage, but it was a jest which made an unintended wound. Hylda became conscious of a sudden sharp inquiry going on in her mind. There flashed into it the question, Does Eglington’s heart ever really throb for love of any object or any cause? Even in moments of greatest intimacy, soon after marriage, when he was most demonstrative towards her, he had seemed preoccupied, except when speaking about himself and what he meant to do. Then he made her heart throb in response to his confident, ardent words—concerning himself. But his own heart, did it throb? Or was it only his brain that throbbed?