A spasm wrung her mouth. Saxham rolled a chair towards her. He said guardedly, avoiding her eyes:
"Until you acquaint me in detail with what you have heard, I cannot explain or defend myself. Will you not sit down? You are looking pale and overwrought."
She laid one slight gloved hand upon the chair-back, and leaned upon it.
"I would rather stand, if you have no objection, whilst I tell you what I have learned to-night. I dined alone with Lady Hannah at the Carlton; we went together to the theatre—Major Wrynche had had a summons to attend at Marlborough House."
She untied the knot of lace beneath her chin, and stripped away the long gloves with nervous haste and impatience, and tossed them with the scarf upon the chair beside her, and went on:
"I had heard much of 'The Chiffon Girl.' I wanted to see it. When the First Act began I wondered very much why they called it a Musical Comedy, when the noise the orchestra made could hardly be called music; and there was no comedy—only slang expressions and stupid jokes. But the actress who sang and danced in the principal part ... Miss Lavigne ..." She had loosened her mantle; now she let it drop upon the Eastern carpet, emerging from its blackness as a slender, supple, upright shape in clinging, creamy-white draperies; her exquisite arms bare to the shoulder, and clasped midway by heavy, twisted bracelets of barbaric gold, her nymph-like bosom swelling from the folded draperies of the low-cut bodice like a twin-budded narcissus flowering from the pale calyx, her sweet throat clasped about with Saxham's gift of pearls.
"She could not sing, though the people applauded and encored her"—there was a gleam of disdain in the golden eyes—"but she was very pretty ... she danced with wonderful grace and lightness ... it was like a swallow dipping and darting over the shallows of the river-shore—like a branch of red pomegranate-blossoms swayed and swung by a spring breeze.... I admired her, and yet I was sorry for her.... To have to pose and bound and whirl before all those rows and rows of staring faces night after night!..."
Saxham did not smile. But a muscle twitched in his cheek as he said:
"She would hardly thank you for pitying her."
"She would be right to resent my pity!" Lynette burst out with sudden vehemence. "She has been injured, and I was the cause! Oh! how could you be so cruel as to let me go on loving him? Was it kind? Was it fair to yourself and me?"