"And when will that be?"
The shout of the arena grew louder in the recall. It surged up to the roof and quivered along the lath and plaster partitions of the boxes.
"Very soon now. Immediately, I think, please God," he said.—But why should she make him speak thus foolishly in riddles? Of a surety she must read the signs of the approach of that momentous and beneficent event as clearly as he himself! Was she not equally with himself involved in it? Was she not, like himself, to be cleansed and set free by it? Therefore it came as a painful bewilderment and shock to him when she drew closer to him, leaned forward, laid her hand lightly upon his thigh.
"Richard," she said, very softly, "I forgive all. I am not satisfied with loving. I will come with you. I will stay with you. I will be faithful to you—yes, yes, even that. Your loving is unlike any other. It is unique, as you yourself are unique. I—I want more of it."
"But you must know that it is too late to go back on that now," he said, reasoning with her, greatly perplexed and distressed by her determined ignoring of—to him—self-evident fact. "All that side of things for us is over and done with."
Her lips parted in naughty laughter. And then, not without a shrinking of quick horror, Richard beheld the soul of her—that being of lovely proportions, exquisitely formed in every part, yet black as the foul, liquid lanes between the hulls of the many ships down in Naples harbour—step delicately in between those parted lips, returning whence it came. And, beholding this, instinctively he raised her hand from where it rested upon his thigh, and put it from him, put it upon her glistering, crocus-yellow lap where her soul had so lately kneeled.
"Let us say no more, Helen," he entreated, "lest we both forfeit our remaining chance, and become involved in hopeless and final condemnation."
But Madame de Vallorbes' anger rose to overwhelming height. She slapped her hands together.
"Ah, you despise me!" she cried. "But let me assure you that in any case this assumption of virtue becomes you singularly ill. It really is a little bit too cheap, a work of supererogation in the matter of hypocrisy. Have the courage of your vices. Be honest. You can be so to the point of insult when it serves your purpose. Own that you are capricious, own that you have lighted upon some woman who provokes your appetite more than I do! I have been too tender of you, too lenient with you. I have loved too much and been weakly desirous to please. Own that you are tired of me, that you no longer care for me!"
And he answered, sadly enough:—