Marya and Jim ... together.... That was the night he went away angry.... The night he told her he had gone directly home.... But it couldn’t have been.... He couldn’t have lied....
She strove to recollect as she sat there staring at the newspaper.... What was it that beast had said about it?... Of course––last night!... Marya and Jim had been together last night.... But where was Vanya?... Oh, yes.... Last night Vanya was away ... in Baltimore.
The paper dropped to her lap; she sat looking straight ahead of her.
What had so shocked her then about Jim and Marya being together? True, she had not supposed them to be on such terms––had not even thought about it....
Yes, she had thought about it, scarcely conscious of her own indefinable uneasiness––a memory, perhaps, of that evening when the Russian girl had been at little pains to disguise her interest in this man. And Palla had noticed it––noticed that Marya was seated too near him––noticed that, and the subtle attitude of 273 provocation, and the stealthy evolution of that occult sorcery which one woman instantly divines in another and finds slightly revolting.
Was it merely that memory which had been evoked when Puma’s laughing revelation so oddly chilled her?––the suspected and discovered predilection of this Russian girl for Jim? Or was it something else, something deeper, some sudden and more profound illumination which revealed to her that, in the depths of her, she was afraid?
Afraid? Afraid of what?
Her charming young head sank; the brown eyes stared at the floor.
She was beginning to understand what had chilled her, what she had unconsciously been afraid of––her own creed!––when applied to another woman.
And this was the second time that this creed of hers had risen to confront her, and the second time she had gazed at it, chilled by fear: once, when she had waited for Ilse to return; and now once again.