Her hostess flicked the ash from her cigarette.
"Some new influence?"
Clodagh was taken unawares.
"I—I have got to know myself better since that time in Venice," she said below her breath. "Some one—something—has made me see that it was not my true self that showed then. I was foolish in those days. I was carried away——"
A very faint smile flitted across Lady Frances's lips.
"That idea belongs to the some one else?" she said in a quiet, cordial tone that invited confidence.
Moved by a sudden impulse, Clodagh leant forward in her seat and clasped her hands. As on the day in Florence—the day when she had written her letter to Laurence Asshlin—her soul thirsted for confession. After two long years of silent thought, the temptation to open her heart in speech was overmastering. The room was comfortable, dimly lighted, almost homelike; the hour was propitious; her hostess's voice was extraordinarily kind. She stole one half-shy, half-eager glance at the averted face.
"Lady Frances," she said suddenly, "I was very childish, very foolish, that time in Venice. I knew it even before I—before I left."
With extreme tact, Lady Frances refrained from looking at her. Smoking quietly, she made her next remark in a low, reassuring voice.
"Then that was why you left so suddenly?"