"Love him," supplemented the girl brokenly. "I see what you mean. I would have given anything in the world to have saved him from this, and—it's too late, already."
"Nothing of the sort!" exclaimed Mrs. Carnby. "Now's the time when he needs you most. If you couldn't win him away from any woman that ever lived, good or bad, you wouldn't be Margery Palffy! Bless me! I must be getting back to the others, my dear. Now don't take this too much to heart. It's all coming out right in the end. These things are only temporary, at worst. Be brave, Margery."
"Oh—brave!" answered Margery, flinging up her chin. "Yes, I shall be that. Don't fear but that I shall know how to handle the situation now. And—thank you, fairy godmother. I'll wait here a few minutes, if you don't mind, and just—think!"
As she walked toward the villa again, Mrs. Carnby compressed her lips.
"Now there's a deal of common sense in that girl," she said to herself. "She must have inherited it from her grandparents!"
But, with all her shrewdness, she had never more hopelessly complicated a situation.
For a time Margery lingered, compelled by the need of reflection and the beauty of the night. All about her the blue-black darkness, eloquent with the breath of the roses and the fluting of the now-emboldened nightingale, sighed and turned in its sleep, as if it dreamed of pleasant things. Paris, with its frivolities, its sins, its sorrows, and its snares, was like some uneasy, half-forgotten dream. The brand had touched the girl, but as yet it had no more than stung, it had not seared. The sword quivered, but the thread yet held. The merciful garment of the calm, sweet night yet smothered, like sleep before awakening, the bitterness of full reality. The moment was one of those oases in the desert of disillusion which, with the crystal clamour of falling water, the cool shade of widespread foliage, and the odour of fresh, moist earth, alone make tolerable the journey of the caravan.
So it was that Margery was able to speak naturally, with the knowledge of having herself well in hand, as a step crunched on the gravel near by, and Andrew flung his cigarette upon the path, where it spawned in a quantity of tiny points of light, which gloomed immediately into nothingness.
"How extravagant you are! Surely you must know by this time that I don't mind smoke in the least. I was just about to go in."
"Not yet for a moment, please," said Andrew. "Let's come into this little arbour. There's something I want to say."