She had never told him the secret want which was making her unhappy. Her manner and her mood varied from flights of ecstasy, bordering on intoxication of spirit, to depths of depression which suggested that the gifted woman was suffering from some sort of mania. She was always eager to see him, always clamoring for more of his time, and yet after the first week or so he never left her presence without being made to feel that her hours with him had been a disappointment.
To tell the truth, he had himself been greatly disappointed in her. She appeared to him altogether frivolous, altogether worldly. He was completely convinced that she had not only toyed with him years ago, but was toying with him now, although of course, in an entirely different way.
For five days he had not seen her, but hating to give up entirely, and finding himself one evening in the vicinity of the Hotel St. Albans, he ventured to run in upon her for a moment. She was decked as if for an evening party in a dress of gold and spangles, as conspicuous for an excess of materials in the train as for an utter absence of them about the arms and shoulders, which, on this occasion, even the blaze of diamonds did not redeem from a look of nakedness to the eyes of the minister,—a mental reaction which any student of psychology will recognize as ample evidence that John Hampstead, man, had passed entirely beyond the power of Marien Dounay, woman.
Miss Dounay received her caller with that low purr of surprise and gladness which was characteristic, and instantly proposed that they go out for a ride on the foothill boulevard, and a dinner at the Three Points Inn.
While the minister had not planned to give her an evening, this was one of the rare occasions when he had leisure time at his disposal, and since he had resolved to make one last effort to help the woman, he decided to accept the invitation.
The evening, however, was not a success. The dinner was good, the roads were smooth, the night air was balmy and full of a thousand perfumes from field and garden; but Miss Dounay's mood, at first merry, sagged lower and lower into a kind of sullen despair, in which she reproached the minister bitterly for his failure to understand her.
François, the chauffeur, had, by command of his mistress, stopped the car on the curve of the hill, at a point where the bright moon made faces as clear as day, and, having climbed down as if to look the car over, they heard his boot heels grow fainter and fainter on the graveled road as he tactfully ambled off out of earshot.
Hampstead was still patient.
"I have been so earnest in my desire to help you," he said, by way of broaching the subject again.
"You cannot help me," Marien snapped. "Something bars you. Your church, your position, all these foolish women who are in love with you, this whole community which has made a 'property' god of you,—they are to blame! They stand between us. They prevent you from seeing what you ought to see. They make you blind. You think you are humble. It is a mock humility. Under its guise you hide a lofty egotism. You think you are a preacher; you are not. You are still an actor, playing your part, and playing it so busily that you have ceased to be genuine. All this sentiment which you display for the suffering and needy and distressed is a worked-up sentiment. It goes with the part you play. It makes you blind, false, hypocritical!"