"Honest to God, I could! But I wouldn't!" The haggard eyes leapt viciously out of their languor. "Let 'em run up against it—same as me! Me that went all the way to Brussels to get the new treatment. Great Scott! When I came to I was black and blue and green all over. And my face! It was a fair scream!" She threw an appraising side-glance in a shop window. "No! My skin'll never be what it used, I reckon."
"But the"—the hard eyes between the elder woman's blued lids were hideously significant—"the Trouble, eh?"
"The Trouble"—Lallie's still girlish shoulders shrugged.—"Oh, that's all right! I heard no more of it! There's the one comfort. Good-bye, ducky. I got to meet somebody at the Cri."
"Well, better luck!" And as the block broke and the car moved on, the women nodded and parted. Margot and her friend Patrine did not look at each other as the car stopped before the Club.
A glance showed the vestibule crowded, the second pair of swing-doors thudded momentarily as members and their guests passed on into the Club rooms, without relieving the congestion that fresh arrivals renewed. Some doors above, a piano-organ in charge of two men was jolting out the last bars of the Russian National Anthem. One of the men, olive-skinned, grey-haired, and dressed in threadbare black, sang the words with perfunctory fervour in a cracked tenor voice. As the last chord banged out and the organist jerked the changing-lever over, and the Marseillaise summoned jangling echoes of its lyrical frenzy from the pavement and the surrounding walls, Patrine, meeting Sherbrand's eyes over the crowded heads of people, knew a sudden shock of apprehension in the strangeness of their regard.
For day and night since that strange, impulsive visit she had made to the Confessional—"You must tell him. It is your duty to tell him!" had sounded in her ears. She set her teeth and determined that she would never tell him, none the less knowing that the revelation would be made. A Power infinitely stronger than her woman's will was bearing upon it. Her treasure was in peril, her fairy-gold at any moment might turn to withered leaves at a breath from her own mouth.
CHAPTER LV
NEWS OF BAWNE
"Pat!—what luck!"
Sherbrand was standing before her, tall and lean and masterful, saluting her with the touch of three fingers to a soldierly forage-cap with three buttons, set jauntily atilt on the broad tanned brow.