Carden put the husband, the fatuous old man, who had had the incredible folly to marry a girl thirty-five years younger than himself, out of court. Pansy, light-hearted, conscienceless Pansy—he always thought of her with a touch of easy tenderness—had run no risk of detection, for, as he had early discovered, she knew no one in London with the solitary exception of the old cousin who lived in Upper Norwood.
As for his own business acquaintances, he might, of course, have been seen by any of them taking about this singularly attractive woman, for the two went constantly to the theatre, and daily to one or other of the great restaurants. But what then? Excepting that she was quieter in manner, far better dressed, and incomparably prettier, Pansy might have been the wife or sister of any one of his own large circle of relations, that great Carden clan who held their heads so high in the business world of the Midlands.
Nay, nay, no risk had been run, and no one had been a penny the worse! Indeed, looking back, Theodore Carden told himself that it had been a perfect, a flawless episode; he even admitted that after all it was perhaps as well that there had been no attempt at a repetition.
And yet? And yet the young man, especially during the first few weeks which had followed that sequence of enchanting days, had often felt piqued, even a little surprised, that the heroine of his amazing adventure had not taken advantage of his earnest entreaty that she would give him the chance of meeting her again. He had left it to her to be mysterious; as for himself, he had seen no reason why he should conceal from her either his name or his business address.
Many men would not have been so frank, but Theodore Carden, too wise in feminine lore to claim an infallible knowledge of women, never remembered having made a mistake as to the moral social standing of a new feminine acquaintance.
During the few days they had been together, everything had gone to prove that Pansy was no masquerader from that under-world whose denizens always filled him with a sensation of mingled aversion and pity. He could not doubt—he never had doubted—that what she had chosen to tell him about herself and her private affairs was substantially true. No man, having heard her speak of it, could fail to understand her instinctive repulsion from the old husband to whom she had sold herself into bondage; and as human, if not perhaps quite as worthy of sympathy, was her restless longing for freedom to lead the pleasant life led by those of her more fortunate contemporaries whose doings were weekly chronicled in the society papers which seemed to form her only reading.
Once only had Carden felt for his entrancing companion the slightest touch of repugnance. He had taken her to a play in which a child played an important part, and she had suddenly so spoken as to make him realise with a shock of surprise that she was the mother of children! Yet the little remark made by her, "I wonder how my little girls are getting on," had been very natural and even womanly. Then, in answer to a muttered word or two on his part, she had explained that she preferred not to have news of her children when she was absent from home, as it only worried her; even when staying with the old cousin at Upper Norwood, she made a point of being completely free of all possible home troubles.
Hearing this gentle, placid explanation of her lack of maternal anxiety, Carden had put up his hand to his face to hide a smile; he had not been mistaken; Pansy was indeed the thorough-going little hedonist he had taken her to be. Still, it was difficult, even rather disturbing, to think of her as a mother, and as the mother of daughters.
Yet how deep an impression this unmoral, apparently soulless woman had made on his mind and on his emotional memory! Even now, when he had no desire, and, above all, must not allow himself to have any desire, ever to see her again, Theodore Carden felt, almost as keenly as he had done during the period of their brief intimacy, a morbid curiosity to know where she lived and had her being.