Helped by Adrian, she rose and, taking his arm, moved slowly toward the doorway.
"Sometimes, unexpectedly, the merciful dimness which holds our eyes is broken up, giving place to momentary clear-seeing of all which lies beyond and around the commonplace and conventional medium in which we live. Unless one is rather abnormally constituted that clear-seeing is liable to blind rather than to illuminate. Flesh and blood aren't quite equal to it. And so with the snapping of the piano string. Doubtless the causes were simple enough—some peculiar atmospheric conditions, along with the fact that the instrument has been unused for many months. Still in me it produced one of those fateful instants of clairvoyance. I knew it for the signing of a death-warrant. Not my own. Thanks to the kindly ministrations of la main heureuse the signature of that particular warrant is postponed for a while yet. Nor yours either, of that I am convinced. I cannot say whose. The clear-seeing was too rapidly obscured by failing bodily strength. I am not talking nonsense. This has happened twice before. The second time a string broke my brother's death followed within the year."
"And the first time?" Adrian felt impelled to ask. His recent expenditure of will-power had left his nerves in a state of slightly unstable equilibrium which rendered him highly impressionable.
"The first time?" Miss Beauchamp repeated, lifting her hand from his arm. "The death of that other true lover, who listened here to my playing, of the friend who walked with me in the hidden garden, followed the breaking of the first string."
Adrian stepped forward and held aside the embroidered curtain, letting her pass into the drawing-room. Here the air was lighter, the moral and emotional atmosphere, as it seemed to him, lighter likewise. He was aware of a relaxation of mental tension and a deadening of sensation which he at once welcomed and regretted. He waited a few seconds until he was sure that in his own case, too, any disquieting tendency to clairvoyance was over and the conventional and commonplace had fairly come back.
Miss Beauchamp passed on into the first room of the suite. Here the lights were turned on and he found her seated at a little supper-table, vivacious, accentuated in aspect and manner, flaming pagoda of curls and frisky cinnamon-colored, sequin-sewn tea-gown once again very much in evidence. But these things no longer jarred on him. He could view them in their true perspective, as the masquerade make-up with which a proud woman elected—in self-defense—to disguise too deep a knowledge, too sensitive a nature, and too passionate a heart.
"Yes, sit down, my dear Savage," she cried, "sit down. Eat and drink. For really it is about time we both indulged in what are vulgarly called 'light refreshments.' We have been surprisingly clever, you and I, and have rubbed our wits together to the emission of many sparks! I am not a bit above restoring wasted tissue in this practical manner—nor, I trust, are you. Moreover, our lengthy discourse notwithstanding, I have still five words to say to you. For, see, very soon Madame St. Leger's period of mourning will be over. She will begin to go into society again."
"Alas! yes." Adrian sighed.
"You don't like it? Probably not. You would prefer keeping her, like blessed St. Barbara, shut up on the top of her tower, I dare say. But doesn't it occur to you that there are as insidious dangers on the tower top as in the world below—visits from the little horror, M. René Dax, for example? Anyhow, she will shortly very certainly descend from the tower. For we are neither of us, I suppose, under the delusion she has buried all her joy of living in poor Horace St. Leger's grave."
"I have no violent objection to her not having done so," Adrian said, with becoming gravity.