"Then you might, in common charity, have let me know that. You were bound to give me an opportunity of speaking to you once again, I think."
In his present state of detachment from all worldly considerations, absolute truthfulness compelled Richard. The event was so certain, the swarming of the bees so very near, that small diplomacies, small evasions, seemed absurdly out of place.
"I did not want to hear you speak," he said.
"But doesn't it strike you that was rather dastardly in face of what had taken place between us? Do you know that you appear in a new and far from becoming light?"
Denial seemed to Richard futile. He remained silent.
For a moment Helen looked towards the stage. When she spoke again it was as with reluctance.
"I was desperately unhappy. I went all over the villa in the vain hope of finding you. I went back to that room of yours in which we parted. I wanted to see it again."—Helen paused. Her speech was low-toned, soft as milk.—"It was rather dreadful, Dickie, for the place was all in disarray, littered with signs of your hasty departure, damp, cheerless—the rain beating against the windows. And I hate rain. I found there, not you—whom I so sorely wanted—but something very much else.—A letter to you from de Vallorbes."—Once more she paused. "I excuse you of anything worse than negligence in omitting to destroy it. Misery knows no law, and I was miserable. I read it."
Richard had listened with the same detachment, yet the same absorbed interest, with which he had watched her entrance. She was a wonderful creature in her adroitness, in her handling of means to serve her own ends! But he could not pay her back in her own coin. The time was too short for anything but simple truth. He felt strangely tired. These reiterated delays became harassing. If the bees would swarm, only swarm! Then it would be over, and he could sleep. He clasped his hands behind his head and looked at Madame de Vallorbes. Her soul kneeled on her lap, its delicate arms were clasped about her neck—black against the lustrous white of her skin and all those twisted ropes of seed pearls. It pressed its breasts against hers, amorously. It loved her and she it. And he understood that in the whole scope of nature there was but it alone, it only, that she ever had loved, or did, or could, love. And, understanding this, he was filled with a great compassion for her. And, answering her, his expression was gentle and pitiful. Still he needs must speak the truth.
"Perhaps it was as well that you should read Luigi's letter," he said.
She turned upon him fiercely and scornfully, yet even as she did so her soul fell to beckoning to him, soliciting him with evilly alluring gestures.