"Do you suppose that she can suspect for an instant that her husband fell in love with her performance?" she said, her eyes following her husband up the stairs.
"She probably hasn't reasoned it out, but I haven't a doubt she feels it intuitively," he replied, continuing his ascent. "You just ask her if she doesn't want to make the plunge again and see what she'll say," he concluded, smiling down at her from the floor above.
XX
Mrs. Tate tried, by an almost impassioned kindness, to atone for her neglect of Blanche during her absence from London. She sent her flowers from her conservatory, she bought gifts for the little Jeanne, she called at the apartment in Upper Bedford Place nearly every morning. During these visits she did not once meet Jules; Blanche told her that he always went away soon after breakfast, and seldom returned before dinner. Sometimes he did not accompany her to the Hippodrome, but he never failed to appear there during the evening. The management had offered to reëngage Miss King as soon as her contract expired, and the diver thought of postponing her return to America; but they had not as yet come to terms, as the girl wanted a much larger salary than she had been receiving.
It was this information that reminded Mrs. Tate to ask Blanche if she were sorry she had given up her plunge and if she ever wished to resume it. Though she had at first been impressed by the solution of Blanche's troubles suggested by her husband, she had on sober second thought dismissed it as ridiculously romantic; such things might happen in novels, but they never could occur in real life. Her belief was shaken, however, when she saw the pale face light up at her question.
"Oh, yes," Blanche cried, "I have thought of it. Sometimes—sometimes I think it would be better if I hadn't given it up. Then—then that woman wouldn't have come." Her eyes filled with tears, but she controlled herself and, a moment later, she went on:—
"But I—I thought it was wrong for me to risk my life, and it made me so unhappy for Jeanne's sake. But sometimes I think I might have stopped being afraid. Before Jeanne was born I never had the least thought of fear, even after father was killed, because I knew that was because the trapeze was weak. Oh, I'm sure," she went on piteously,—"I'm sure I shouldn't be afraid any more!"
"But Dr. Broughton, you remember what he said, don't you?"