“Since you are so tired, and I've been so very objectionable, I think perhaps you had better go back to your hotel,” Lee proposed. “It's after ten.” She rose immediately, but had to remain until the waiter was summoned with their account. In her limousine she seemed smaller, more lost in her fate and money, than before. She resembled a crushed and lovely flower; and Lee reflected that it was a shame no one was there to revive her. Mina Raff, at the Plaza, insisted, holding his hand in a mingled thoughtfulness and pictorial misery, on sending him to the Groves'; and his last glimpse of her, over his shoulder, was of a slight figure hurled into upper expensive mansions by an express elevator.
A car not the Groves' was outside their house; and, as Lee was passing the drawing-room doors, William Grove called him in. He found there a Dr. Davencott and his wife, obviously on terms of close intimacy with the house. The physician was a thickly-built man with an abrupt manner continually employed in sallies of a vigorous but not unkindly humor. Lee gathered that his practice was large and select; and he quickly saw the reason, the explanation, of this: Dr. Davencott had carried the tonic impatience of earlier years among inconsequential people into a sphere where bullying was a novelty with a direct traceable salutary effect. But whatever harshness was visible in him was tempered by his wife, who was New England, Boston itself, at its best. She had a grave charm, a wit, rather than humor, which irradiated her seriousness, and gave even her tentative remarks an air of valuable finality.
To this Mrs. Grove contributed little. She practically avoided speaking to Lee Randon; and he was certain that she was, cheaply and inexcusably, offended at him. Then, in moving, her gaze caught his, their eyes held fixed; and, as he looked, the expression he had seen on her face that afternoon in the library, drawn and white with staring black eyes, came upon her. It amazed him so much that he, too, sat regarding her in an intentness which took no account of the others. One of Mrs. Grove's hands, half hidden in green tulle, was clenched. She breathed in an audible sigh and, with what appeared to be a wrenching effort, turned from him to the general conversation.
Lee Randon, losing his first impression of her attitude, was totally unable to comprehend the more difficult state that had its place. A possible explanation he dismissed before it had crystallized into thought. At the same time, the restlessness which had left him for the past twenty-four hours returned, more insistent than ever. He felt that it would be impossible to remain seated, calmly talking, for another minute. The conversation of the Davencotts that had so engaged him now only sounded like a senseless clatter of words and unendurable laughter. He wished they would go; that all of them except Savina Grove would vanish; but why he wanted her to stay, why he wished to be alone with her, and what, in such a circumstance, he would say, were all mysteries. Lee determined to rise and make his bow, to escape; he was aware of an indefinable oppression, like that he had often experienced during a heavy electric storm; he had the absurd illusion that a bolt of lightning.... Lee Randon didn't stir: he sat listening with a set smile, automatic small speech, and a heart with an unsteady rising pound.
The Doctor's stories, he thought, went on unsupportably; his wife was wise, correct, just, to a hair's breadth. Good God, when would they go? Now—there was a break in the conversation—he would rise and say good-night. Probably they wanted to discuss things more personal than his presence allowed and were waiting for just that. He was aware that Mrs. Grove's gaze, as though against her resolute effort, was moving toward him; but, quite desperately, he avoided it; he gazed up at a chandelier of glittering and coruscating glass and down at a smooth carpet with Chinese ideographs on a light background. He heard the flexible vibration of the pleasure traffic on Fifth Avenue; and, perhaps because it was so different, it reminded him of the ringing milk cans in the early morning by his house.
Lee Randon made a sharp effort to rouse himself from what threatened to be a stupor faintly lurid with conceptions of insanity; and the result of this mental drawing himself erect was even more startling, more disconcerting, than his previous condition. It came from the realization that what animated Mrs. Grove was passion. This was incredible, but it was true; he had never before seen, nor imagined, such an instant sultry storm of emotions held precariously in check. Beyond measure it surprised and baffled and agitated him. He understood now that sense of impending lightning; and, at the same time, he had a sense that a peremptory brass gong had been struck beside him, and that he was deafened by the reverberations. Mrs. Grove's still pallid face, her contained, almost precise, manner, took on a new meaning—he saw them, fantastically, as a volcanic crust that, under observation, had hardened against the fire within. Then he was at a loss to grasp why he, Lee Randon, was permitted to see so much.
His thoughts returned to himself—the voices of the Davencotts, of William Loyd Grove, echoed from a distance on his hearing—and he tried to re-arrange his bearing toward his unsought discovery: this was of enormous importance. He must at once regulate his approach to Mrs. Grove, get himself firmly in hand; the situation, for him particularly, had far-reaching unpredictable possibilities. For all her exactness, Savina Grove had a very exclusive and definite attractiveness; and, faced by such a dilemma, Lee had the best of reasons for doubting the ultimate regularity of his response.
But he was, he thought, mentally halting, racing absurdly to unjustified conclusions; nothing, naturally, disturbing would arise; but that assurance, the heights of reason, soon faded. There could be no doubt of the cause of Mrs. Grove's blanched staring: just as there was no evasion of the danger created by no more than his scant recognition. Passion discovered was a thousand diameters increased; mutually admitted, it swept aside all opposition. Lee Randon, however, had no intention of involving himself there while, ironically, he was engaged in securing for Claire Morris her husband; he didn't propose to compromise his ease of mind with William Grove's wife. There was, as well, the chance that she was a little unbalanced; progressing, he might involve himself in a regrettable, a tragic, fix. He would not progress, that was all there was to that! Lee felt better, freer already, at this resolution; he wasn't, he protested inwardly, a seducer of women; the end itself, the consummation, of seduction, was without tyrannical power over him. Lee wasn't materially, patiently, sensual in that uncomplicated manner. No, his restlessness was more mysterious, situated deeper, than that; it wasn't so readily satisfied, drugged, dismissed. The fact struck him that it had little or no animal urgency; and in this, it might be, he was less lucky than unlucky.
Mrs. Davencott rose and resumed her wrap, retained with her on the back of the chair. Lee met the pleasant decisiveness of her capable hand, the doctor grasped his fingers with a robust witticism; and he was replying to the Davencotts' geniality when he had a glimpse of Mrs. Grove's face turned slightly from him: the curve of her cheek met the pointed chin and the graceful contour of her exposed long throat; there was the shadow of a tormenting smile on the pale vermilion of her lips, in her half closed eyes; her hair, in that light, was black. A sensation of coldness, a spiritual shiver, went through Lee Randon; the resemblance that had eluded him was mercilessly clear—it was to the doll, to Cytherea.