IT was a cold gray afternoon in the spring when the sun, breaking through the clouds, picked out for brief moments the faint green on the trees of the little park in the Avenue du Bois. Side by side the white houses stood, withdrawn a little from the street, flamboyant yet cold, ornate but barren. Sabine, watching them from the window of her tiny motor, was thankful again in a comfortable indefinite fashion that she had escaped from their insufferable pomp into the tiny, exquisite house in the Rue Tilsit.
Of late she had come at times to forget all the secret misery of the twelve years; she had been almost happy, as nearly happy as it was possible for her to be. It seemed to her now that circumstances had been cruel. She should have been born a man; and as a man, with a freedom from all the world of Mrs. Champion and her Virgins, she would have turned her mind to science. It was that sort of a mind; and it was only recently that she had come to believe it wasted ... frittered away on tiny, nonsensical things, things which in the end only ate into her own chance for happiness. In all her life there had been nothing which had taken possession of her—nothing save the barren, futile passion for her husband. Her life, she reflected, had been a wasted one. As a man, she would have been free ... free in the same fashion as Ellen Tolliver. She could have done as she liked, waiting upon no one. It seemed to her that her whole life had been spent in going from place to place, always in a tiny, expensive motor, arriving nowhere in the end. She was neither one thing nor the other; she had fallen somewhere between the sterility of Janey and Margaret Champion and the fierce activity of Ellen Tolliver.
Ellen Tolliver had been free, without background, without friends, alone, an adventuress (not at all in the evil sense) but one who had gone unhindered toward the thing which possessed her. Perhaps Ellen Tolliver would succeed now where she had failed. None, thought Sabine, knew the perils which lay ahead so well as herself and the old curiosity began to assail her; she wanted passionately to see Ellen Tolliver, to find out from her in any fashion possible, scrupulous or otherwise, what had happened in those months since she said good-by to Callendar and Thérèse. Perhaps Ellen saw him more clearly than herself; perhaps she had discovered his secret ... the nature of him. She had come to respect Ellen Tolliver.
The car halted. Amedé, neat and mustachioed, stood holding the door for her. With an effort of will she wrapped her fur cloak about her and stepped on to the pavement.
“Wait for me,” she said. “I may want you to carry some things. I’ll send Victorine when I want you.”
The big ornate house had the look of a place closed and deserted; the shutters were up and the shades drawn save in the entresol. At the door, Victorine, who had been clearly watching for her, stood waiting with a gleam in her eye which Sabine, from long association, was able to read. It was a look with which Victorine triumphantly announced household calamities. As Sabine stepped into the great hall, the housekeeper put her finger to her mustachioed lips and murmured, “Madame Callendar is here....” And then, with the air of turning the morsel about, she added, “The young Madame Callendar.” And again, when her former mistress seemed not to be sufficiently shocked, she continued, “The new Mrs. Callendar.”
For a moment Sabine stood hesitating, as if deciding whether to turn and run; it would have been an excellent excuse for never entering the house again. But far back in her consciousness, the old, insatiable curiosity gnawed and gnawed.
“Why has she returned?” she asked. “Where is Monsieur Callendar?”
Victorine shrugged her fat shoulders. “I don’t know, Madame. None of us knows anything. A cable came at noon to-day with the news that she was arriving ... to make things ready. I telephoned you.... I sent messages. The word came that you did not return for lunch and no one knew where you were.” With an air of drama, she said again, “The new Madame Callendar came in an hour ago.”
Sabine stood biting her crimson lips. If Ellen Tolliver had returned from Tunis, it was not likely that she would be going away soon, and it would be awkward to ask her permission to enter the house. Why had she returned? Why had Callendar not come with her? She turned to Victorine.