The red and purple trunks of the great fir trees reeled away to right and left as the carriage swept forward down the long avenue. To Richard's seeing they reeled away in disgust, even as did his thought from the images which his companion's words suggested. While, to her seeing, they reeled, smitten by the eternal laughter, the echoes of which it stimulated her to hear.—"The drama develops," she said to herself, half triumphant, half abashed. "And yet I am telling the truth, it is all so—I hardly even doctor it."—For she had been angered, genuinely and miserably angered, and had found that odious to the point of letting feeling override diplomacy. There was subtle pleasure in now turning her very lapse of self-control to her own advantage. And then, this young man's heart was the finest, purest-toned instrument upon which she had ever had the chance to play as yet. She was ravished by the quality and range of the music it gave forth. Madame de Vallorbes pressed her hands together within the warm comfort of her sable muff, averted her face again, lest it should betray the eager excitement that gained on her, and continued:—
"Yes, whip and rein and bit are hardly pretty in that connection, are they? If you would willingly give your identity the slip at times, dear cousin, I have considerably deeper cause to wish to part company with mine! You, in any case, are morally and materially free. A whole class of particularly irritating and base cares can never approach you. And it was in connection with just such cares that I spoke of the hatefulness of return journeys."
Helen paused, as one making an effort to maintain her equanimity.
"My letters recall me to Paris," she said, "where detestable scenes and most ignoble anxieties await me."
"How soon must you go?"
"That is what I asked myself," she said, in the same quiet, even voice. "I have not yet arrived at a decision, and so I asked you to bring me out Dickie, this afternoon."—She looked up at him, smiling, lovely and with a certain wistful dignity, wholly coercive. "Can you understand that the orderly serenity of your splendid house became a little oppressive? It offered too glaring a contrast to my own state of mind and outlook. I fancied my brain would be clearer, my conclusions more just, here out of doors, face to face with this half-savage nature."
"Ah, I know all that," Richard said. Had not the blankness of the fog brought him help this very morning?—"I know it, but I wish you did not know it too."
"I know many things better not known," Helen replied. Her conscience pricked her. She thanked her stars confession had ceased with enlargement from the convent-school, and was a thing of the past. "You see, I want to decide just how long I dare stay—if you will keep me?"
"We will keep you," Richard said.
"You are very charming to me, Dick," she exclaimed impulsively, sincerely, again slightly abashed. "How long can I stay, I wonder, without making matters worse in the end, both for my father and for myself? I am young, after all, and I suppose I am tough. The cuticle of the soul—if souls can have a cuticle—like that of the body, thickens under repeated blows. But my father is no longer young. He is terribly sensitive where I am concerned. And he is inevitably drawn into the whirlpool of my wretched affair sooner or later. On his account I should be glad to defer the return journey as long——"