The unlooked-for reply halted him. He vacillated a moment suspiciously, wondering whether to accept the situation, but, the shyster prevailing, he turned on his heel and went up the stairs.
The woman smiled with the consciousness of a first advantage. But no sooner did the steps creak than she abandoned herself to a paroxysm of despair, twisting and turning the scarf in her hands until it cut them, as though to fight with the physical sting the agony of the mind. Yet in this violent return to her first agitation there was nothing to suggest grief for another; rather she seemed a prey to the torments of the gambler who, by a sudden upset, sees a fortune elude his fingers, dissipating in the air. She was, at the first glance, of that gay and fragile class who comprehend nothing but pleasure and see pleasure bounded only by the narrow limits of youth, into which they wish to compress all emotions, all desires, and all sensations; who pursue their ideals, palpitating and with bandaged eyes, and are consumed alike by their gratification and their hunger. On them weigh perhaps the heaviest the inequalities of society. Mixtures of desires and scruples, peculiarly American, swayed by conflicting ideals and prejudices, they wish to taste of the glittering world at any price except at the price of outward respectability. A young man attracted to Sheila Fargus by her facile beauty would have mistaken her for an adventuress or a saint. A man of the world, knowing her weakness and her fetishes, would have recognized that she might become either.
As soon as the step of Bofinger was heard returning, she drew herself hastily together, but the lawyer, to further satisfy himself, passed into the kitchen.
She rose, inhaled a long breath, extended her arms as though to shake off the rigidity of her emotion, and finding herself pale, pinched her cheeks. The lawyer returned too conscious of his tactical disadvantage to notice the traces of her agitation.
"So you feel at rest now," she said maliciously.
"My dear, take it as a tribute to you," he answered. "You had the air of truth but you might have been—"
"More clever?"
"Exactly," he said. "You can't be sure with a woman."
To shut off further reference he cast himself back in his chair, brought his fingers to a cage, and demanded, as though from impulse, "Sheila, answer this—and carefully, for it is vital. Before Fargus left for Mexico did he show any suspicion?"