Her apartment was in one of those modern houses where dinner is cooked by a chef downstairs and sent up via the dumbwaiter. To Parsinova this had proved a convenience, saving as it did the necessity of curious servants. To-night she had arranged for one of the waiters from the restaurant below to serve them. But in spite of him, noiselessly in the background, it was a cozy, intimate little party that somehow brought them closer than all their former dinners. The small table set in a corner of the living-room, its glistening silver and lacy feminine damask, the dishes she had herself ordered, created a sense of home dangerous to the peace of mind of an actress wedded to her art.
[47]
] To crown the illusion, when the café noir had been served and the waiter disappeared, Randolph pulled a pipe from his pocket and asked if he might light it. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to smoke a pipe with you.”
“But I do not—smoke a pipe.”
“Don’t interpret me so literally. A pipe means fireside, something intimate and real. I’ve always thought it would be nice, one of these days, to see your face through pipe smoke. May I?”
She nodded, curled on a cushion by the fire. It was a rainy night. The logs whirred merrily. “Now—tell me more about your won-der-ful West.” She lighted a cigarette and listened, eyes partly closed, and a sweet tranquillity bathed her soul.
He pulled his chair closer. Unconsciously, perhaps, her head dropped against the arm. If a moment later she felt a hand lightly caress her hair, she gave no sign. Parsinova fans would undoubtedly have been amazed at the scene—the Russian actress curled like a kitten at the foot of a man’s chair while he painted with broad strokes pictures of prairie life.
It was what he did just as he was leaving that shattered her serenity like an explosion. They were standing in the foyer and she had given him her hand with her “Good-night,” when suddenly she was in his arms. They closed round her, swept her to him and his lips were on hers. For a long moment they stood so. Then, without a word, he put her at arm’s length, held her eyes with a look whose intensity she found impossible to read. An instant later she was alone.
[48]
] But those few moments brought her up sharp. Hours afterward she felt the vice of his arms gripping her, the thrill of his kiss, and knew that she loved him. Subconsciously she had known it a long time. But she had never faced the issue. Content with a comradeship dear to both Elizabeth Parsons and Lisa Parsinova, she had drifted without any forward look, without taking count of what payment the future might exact. And now the hour had come. Elizabeth Parsons, who had never loved before, loved Hubert Randolph. Hubert Randolph loved Parsinova who, according to all report, had loved many times and with not too much reserve. Long hours she lay staring into the blank darkness of her room. Out of it she could draw nothing but misery.
Heretofore she had accepted Parsinova’s manufactured past without question. Now it was a lurid flame, flaring through the smoke of all reasoning, torturing her—more real because it was unreal. Had it been fact, there would be no problem. As things were, it was the ghost at the banquet, a ghost of that which had never been. And there was no solution! There never would be!
Elizabeth Parsons was New England. It was part of her plan of life to marry when she loved. That was as fundamental as the blood in her veins. The very intensity of emotion of which she was capable was reëxpressed in her intensity of adherence to the moral conduct generations of upright-living ancestors had laid down for her. From that there could be no swerving. It was part of her.