That Rivière could watch the scene pictured before him without stirring—could watch in silence the spectacle of his wife's infatuation for another man—might seem superficially as the height of cynical cold-bloodedness. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Rivière was a man of very deep and very strong feelings held habitually under a rigid control. Self-control is very often mistaken superficially for cold-bloodedness, just as heartiness is mistaken for big-heartedness.
He was balanced enough to hold no blame for Olive. Within two years of marriage he had plumbed her to the depths. It was not in her to be more than a reckless spender of other people's money and other people's lives. She was born to waste just as another is born to create. The way in which she was throwing herself at Larssen during his absence for a few weeks was typical of her inborn character, which nothing could uproot.
It was clear beyond doubt that Olive did not want him back. She preferred him out of her way. If he could disappear for ever, leaving his fortune in her hands, she would unquestionably be glad of it. What he had in fact brought about by taking up the personality of John Rivière was what she seemed most to desire.
He was coming home as an intruder. Even in his own house there would be no welcome for him. He was not wanted.
There was a sudden stiffening on the part of Olive, as though she heard someone about to enter the room. Sir Francis came in, shook hands cordially with Larssen, and all three made their way to dinner.
Rivière was left looking into an empty room. With sudden decision he made his way out of the grounds of Thornton Chase. He would see the shipowner to-morrow in his office at Leadenhall Street rather than thrash out the coming quarrel in front of Olive and Sir Francis.
His duty lay in taking up once more the role of Clifford Matheson and returning to Olive's side. Though what he had seen that evening made the duty trebly distasteful, he must carry it out to the end. Yet to himself he was glad of the short respite. For one night more he would breathe freedom as John Rivière.
Only one night more!
For the moment, time was no object to him, and he proceeded on foot through Roehampton village and by the sodden coppices of Putney Heath to the Portsmouth high road and the railway station of East Putney.
He waited at the station until an underground train snaked its way in like a giant blindworm, and went with it to the Temple and so to the quiet hotel he had chosen in Lincoln's Inn Fields. On his way, he sent off a telegram to the shipowner stating that John Rivière would call at Leadenhall Street at eleven o'clock in the morning.