John's hand reached out and clutched the table violently, while his body leaned forward as if to rise. What was that she had said so loudly he could hear, and so astonishing that he could not believe his ears?
He had been sitting there such a long, long time, thinking thoughts like these, stirred, soothed, and stirred again by the sound of her voice, heard intermittently between the numbers of the orchestra. He had ordered food and eaten, then ordered more and eaten that,—anything to think and wait, he did not know for what.
Waiters bearing trays had come and gone unceasingly from behind the curtain four feet from his eyes, and he knew that they had borne more bottles than food. Several times he had heard a sound like "shots off-stage." This sound always succeeded the entry of a gold sealed bottle. Evidently they were drinking heavily behind the curtain, Litschi's voice growing lower and less coherent, and Marien's louder and less reserved, till for some time he had been catching little snatches of her conversation. She had been talking about her future, painting a picture of the success she would make when her opportunity came; but now she had said the thing that staggered him.
"What?" he came near to saying aloud; and at the same time he heard the drink-smothered voice of Litschi also with interrogative inflection. Litschi, too, wanted to be sure that he had heard aright.
"I say," iterated the voice of Marien deliberately, as if with calculated carrying power, "that a woman who is ambitious must be prepared to pay the price demanded—her heart, her soul—if need be—herself!"
She plumped out the last word ruthlessly, and broke into a half-tipsy laugh that had in it a suggestion unmistakable as much as to say:
"You understand now, don't you, Gustav Litschi? You realize what I am offering to the man who buys me opportunity?"
Her heart—her soul—herself! Hampstead, having started up, sat down again weakly, the cold sweat of horror standing out upon his brow.
So this was what she had meant all the time in her speech about the calculating life. She could not give herself up to love him or any one, because she was dangling herself as a final lure to the man who would give her opportunity.
"Why, this woman was spiritually—morally—potentially, a—" he could barely let himself think the hateful word. To utter it was impossible.