"And praying that other people won't find out?" I asked.
"They will, I'm afraid. Well, Sonia's utterly reckless, I gather; she doesn't care who knows. Grayle wouldn't have cared in the old days. When he was living with her predecessor—you know, the wife of the man in the Brazilian Legation;—Grayle's so untidy in his amours; they always overlap—it was common property, they went almost everywhere together, she took the head of his table. Since those happy, careless times Grayle has discovered political ambitions. From the fact that not more than a handful of people know, I judge that Grayle wants to keep the thing quiet; I'm prepared to bet that Grayle would like best of all to be free of the whole tangle and, if he can't do that, he'd like the divorce to come on as quickly as possible. There's another thing you've left out. Do you suppose Grayle had contemplated a scandal, a divorce, the necessity of marrying the woman?"
"I don't suppose anyone in his position sits down and thinks it out in cold blood," I said.
Bertrand opened his left eye and looked at me with a malicious smile; then closed it and opened the right.
"Some do, some don't," he answered. "That's been my experience. I don't much mind your healthy incontinent animal, but I hate your continent calculating man—the creature who regulates his passions by his fears. He's artificial, to start with, and he's dangerous. Now, I sit here like the sailor's parrot. Grayle is becoming the calculating animal, Grayle for the first time in his life feels that he has a reputation to lose, Grayle is combining disreputable tastes with a decorous exterior."
Bertrand paused to chuckle cynically.
"Well?" I said.
"Well? Everybody seems to leave out one thing in his calculations, and Grayle was no exception. I put it to you a moment ago that he never contemplated the position he's in now; I suggest that Grayle saw a very beautiful young woman and decided, as you'd expect of him, that she was fair prey. He studied her carefully. She wasn't to be bought, because throughout her life she's been receiving everything and giving nothing in return; she wasn't to be drugged, because her head's strong and her nature's cold; she wasn't to be cajoled—Beresford was doing the chivalrous devotion business, and she treated him like a tame cat, which is what he was;—Grayle discovered that the only thing to do was to bully her. He went away, neglected her, snubbed her when they met—enough to mortify her without even suggesting he cared enough to try and hurt her,—shewed her quite plainly that he could get on without her. Down she came with a run and began to make advances to him. He was too busy to waste time on her. She was piqued, she began to throw herself at him until at last he got her into his power.... I don't know who made her think she'd any cause to be jealous of Miss Merryon; it may have been Grayle, she may have evolved it for herself to excuse her leaving her husband; certainly she lashed herself into thinking it was all true, and that was Grayle's opportunity. But, once more, he never thought of anything more than a passing intrigue, which would have been easy enough with the husband away three months at a time. Unfortunately the husband turned up unexpectedly just as the intrigue began, and that lifted everything on to a much higher plane. Grayle cut and ran like a boy caught robbing an orchard—to be followed a couple of hours later by the woman." Once off the subject of O'Rane, Bertrand was enjoying himself prodigiously. "I would have given something to see his face when she arrived. Now, in my experience, there are mighty few crimes and cruelties that the female won't commit to protect the male—the male she's interested in;—she'll lie and thieve—and we've probably both of us seen her fixing the blame on the wrong man, letting him be cited as co-respondent to save her lover. Well, Beresford was sacrificed to protect Grayle; Grayle himself, who'd stayed behind in England to carry out the intrigue, used the excuse of his mission to the Front to cover his tracks. For two months and more he's contrived to keep the thing secret. Do you imagine he isn't ready—however much infatuated about her he may be or may have been—to get rid of her and start again unembarrassed? When we talk about lifelong devotion, we none of us expect to be taken at our word."
Bertrand opened his eyes to look at me, and I saw that he was shaken with noiseless chuckles of malice. I could not share in his merriment.
"I don't see how this helps," I said. "She wants a divorce, he wants to get rid of her, and O'Rane—she won't come back to him, and, if she did, I can't conceive of his taking her back."