"Tell me"—he turned to her—"I wish you would. You never have—why you left New York ... and gave up singing ... everything there, and came here."
Sophie dropped into her chair again.
"But you know."
"Who could know anything of you, Sophie?"
She moved the stones on the bench absent-mindedly. At length she said:
"You remember our big row about Adler, when I was going to the supper on his yacht?"
Armitage exclaimed with a gesture of protest.
"I know," Sophie said, "you were angry ... you didn't mean what you said. But you were right all the same. You said I had let the life I was leading go to my head—that I was utterly demoralised by it.... I was angry; but it was true. You know the people I was going about with...."
"I did my best to get you away from them," Armitage said.
Sophie nodded. "But I hadn't had enough then ... of the beautiful places and things I found myself in the midst of ... and of all the admiration that came my way. What a queer crowd they were—Kalin, that Greek boy who was singing with me in Eurydice, Ina Barres, the Countess, Mrs. Youille-Bailey, Adler, and the rest of them.... They seemed to have run the gamut of all natural experiences and to be interested only in what was unnatural, bizarre, macabre.... Adler in that crowd was almost a relief. I liked his—honest Rabelaisianism, if you like.... I hadn't the slightest intention of more than amusing myself with him ... but he, evidently, did not intend to be merely a source of amusement to me. The supper on the yacht.... I kept my head for a while, not long, and then——"