Willie Enslee was one of the stubborn minority that refused to dance or go to dances. After a number of vain assertions of an authority he could not enforce he ceased to concern himself with Persis' whereabouts; she ceased to announce her program in advance or to report it afterward.
The motor-car was another immense enlargement of liberty—and license; it was so easy to outstrip pursuit and outwit espionage. In two hours one could vanish into the wilderness and return without evidence of escape. At distant road-houses and motor-caravansaries the twang of tango music troubled the country midnights.
And so the intrigue of Captain Forbes and Mrs. Enslee prospered and established itself as the habit of their lives; their souls adapted themselves to it. Precautions against discovery became second nature, like precautions against disease and accident. They were bound together in a kind of secret wedlock, what Tibullus called the furtivi foedera lecti.
Persis, like another Guenevere, justified herself to herself by the feeling that she was true to one Launcelot; she flirted with no one else; she kept Willie's home in order as best she could; she paid him the tribute of outward devotion and public respect. Above all, she justified herself by her success. So far as she could see, not a human being suspected her love for Forbes, not a breath of scandal had been stirred.
And all the while gossip was busy with them; evidence accumulated against them grain by grain, as sand-dunes are formed into walls. Everybody spoke of the intrigue to everybody but those most concerned. Nobody warned Persis or rebuked Persis or tattled to Willie. A few fearless persons talked to Persis' father, but he could not believe, or, believing, could not touch so repulsive a topic in his few meetings with his daughter. How could a father accuse his little girl of outrages against a commandment he had been afraid even to mention to her. Several women broached the theme with Willie's mother, who had been suspicious on her own account. She answered the gossips with fervent denials and with vigorous defense of Persis; but she vowed to herself that she would descend upon her daughter-in-law with vengeance. Yet, before Persis' eyes she could only dissemble; then she would resolve to warn her son, but she feared the terrific possibilities of lighting such a fuse. Willie was like herself in so many ways, and half of her blood was from the Spanish aristocracy through an international marriage.
Eventually people began to say that somebody must tell Willie, and some day somebody might. Some day he might stumble upon some tryst, or open a letter, or overhear a gossip's careless word.
Ten Eyck heard plenteous scandal, and he was heartbroken. Even his cynicism could not stomach the intrigue. But even his affection could not bring him to protest.
He had intervened once before in such a scandal; but the husband had forgiven his wife because of her beauty and her gaiety, and both of them had thereafter been his bitterest enemies, because he knew and had said too much. Friends who had merely gossiped behind their backs were reinstated to complete favor.
Everybody felt that Persis and Forbes, in their mad gallop across another man's boundary line, were riding for a fall. But everybody was fascinated by the breathlessness of the gallopade, the escapes from disaster. Nobody cut Persis, omitted her from a list of invitations, or treated her otherwise than as a valued and charming ornament to the world. Nobody would desert her so long as she kept the saddle, held her head up, and remained attractive.
But should she fall and be dragged in the dirt, then the panic would come; then the majesty of public morals would assert itself, and her friends would flee from her as if she appeared among them chalk-faced and scaly-handed with leprosy.