'As if you didn't know well enough that you're perfectly irresistible when you look at a man while you're singing those Neapolitan things. Biddy, it won't do. Give it up.'
'I can't do that, Joan.' She spoke with a strange earnestness. 'Don't you see that it's giving me a chance.'
'Of forgetting Mr Willoughby Maule!'
'Yes.... But it's more than that.'
'More than that.... Do you mean ... can you mean that you could love Colin McKeith—for himself?'
'Love is a big word, Joan. I've never said to any man—"I love you."' She spoke the words now as if she were uttering a sacred formula. Her voice reminded Mrs Gildea of something—the same note in the voice of Colin McKeith when he, too, had spoken of love. Yet what she had said was true. Bridget had talked often enough of falling 'in love'—which she had always been at pains to define as a mere transitory condition—not by any means the 'real thing,' and she had freely confessed to violent attractions and even adorations. But, as she had sometimes solemnly stated, she had never 'loved.'
'I can't explain,' she went on. 'I know you think me a heartless, emotional flirt. Yes, I am. I admit it. But there's a locked door in the inner chamber—a shrine that no one has desecrated. The Goddess is there, waiting—waiting to reveal herself.'
'And so—all the rest have been—experiments?'
'No, The Quest of the Ideal through the Forest of Illusion. I've often thought, Joan, there was a lot in the motive of that novel of Thomas Hardy's THE WELL BELOVED. But I seem to be mixing up my metaphor, and it's time I went back to Government House.' She got up and began putting on her gloves.
Mrs Gildea laughed hysterically. Somehow, she could not imagine Colin McKeith producing the golden key and masterfully taking possession of Lady Bridget's locked shrine. She could only think of him as tricked, deceived and suffering hideously at the end. She stammered out her fear, beseeching Biddy to be merciful, but Biddy's mood had changed, and she only smiled her Sphinx smile.