They were yet some little distance from the hotel, and Spencer was at a loss to account for this sudden dismissal. She saw the look of bewilderment in his face.
“I have found a back stairs door,” she explained, with a smile. “I really don’t think I should have dared to come out at half-past ten if I had to pass the Gorgons in the foyer.”
She flitted away by a side path, leaving Spencer more convinced than ever that he had blundered egregiously in dragging this sedate and charming girl from the quiet round of existence in London to the artificial life of the Kursaal. Some feeling of unrest had driven her forth to commune with the stars. Was she asking herself why she was denied the luxuries showered on the doll-like creatures whose malicious tongues were busy the instant Bower set foot in the hotel? It would be an ill outcome of his innocent subterfuge if she returned to England discontented and rebellious. She was in “chastened mood,” she had said. He wondered why? Had Bower been too confident,—too sure of his prey to guard his tongue? Of all the unlooked for developments that could possibly be bound up with the harmless piece of midsummer madness that sent Helen Wynton to Switzerland, surely this roué’s presence was the most irritating and perplexing.
Then from the road came another stanza from the wine bibbers, now homeward bound. They were still howling about Margharita in long sustained cadences. And Spencer knew his Faust. It was to the moon that the lovesick maiden confided her dreams, and Mephisto was at hand to jog the elbow of his bewitched philosopher at exactly the right moment.
Spencer threw his cigar into the gurgling rivulet of the Inn. He condemned Switzerland, and the Upper Engadine, and the very great majority of the guests in the Kursaal, in one emphatic malediction, and went to his room, hoping to sleep, but actually to lie awake for hours and puzzle his brains in vain effort to evolve a satisfying sequel to the queer combination of events he had set in motion when he ran bare headed into the Strand after Bower’s motor car.
