And now she had been turned out of her lover's house! And the world would know it any day. Already her husband's solicitors had written to Grayle, asking for his solicitor's name and address. The letter had been on the Buhl cabinet, and she had opened it in his presence. From the very first she had always opened his letters like that; he had enjoyed it; it had seemed to bring them closer.... But this time he was furious. That was the first of the big scenes which had ended with her leaving the house.... She did not know when the case would be heard, but the story would race round London; and other stories would be reminiscently tacked on to it—her two broken engagements before she married; it would be said that no man could endure her for more than six months.... She found herself shaken with quivering, dry sobs.
In the hall of the hotel a man bowed to her, and she tried not to see him, as though she had no right to be there. And, when the room had been allotted her, she hurried to it and locked herself in; no one could stare at her there, no one could begin to speak and then recollect and break off. She looked at her watch, dreading the descent to the dining-room, though it was not yet four o'clock; and suddenly she remembered that she had promised to dine with Lord Pentyre and go to a play. He was home on short leave, they had met at luncheon two days before, and she had chosen the restaurant and the theatre....
It was a test case. Since leaving "The Sanctuary" she had occasionally dined out with Grayle, occasionally met him by chance at other houses and often dined with him at home; they had also dined separately with their respective friends, trying to reveal no outward change in their lives until it was forced upon them. Soon people would refuse to meet her, for, whatever else the altercation with Grayle had made clear, they were being of a sudden universally discussed. Bobbie Pentyre had said something about bringing his mother, who had come to London for his leave and wanted to see as much of him as possible. If Lady Pentyre refused to come ... if her absence had to be laboriously explained....
The telephone meant questions. She wrote out a telegram and sent it down by the hand of her chambermaid; then she lay down on the bed and tried first to make her mind a blank, but Grayle's voice was echoing in her ears, then to surrender to her headache, but it absorbed only half her attention. If she could explain and cry to someone ... a man.... Staring dully at the clock, she told herself that now she would have been dressing, now telling the butler to get her a taxi; now, when her dinner was brought in on a tray, Lord Pentyre would be waiting in the lounge at Claridge's; another moment, and he would have been hurrying forward to shake her hand, order her a cocktail, offer her a cigarette....
The hotel would be filled with people that she knew and wanted to see—not that she cared about them, but because there was something friendly about knowing and being known. She loved living in a crowd. In her first season, when she came up from the country and was uncertain of herself, she could have cried with mortification when everyone else was so much at ease and she was left in the cold until she spoke of comparative strangers by their Christian names, like the others, to pretend that she, too, had known them since she was a child. Instead of which.... She was extraordinarily attractive, her father never grudged money, her mother worked indefatigably; and—there was no harm in saying it, when it was all over,—she had been taken at her own valuation, socially boomed.... When she was engaged to Jim Loring—she could see it now—what a mésalliance the old marchioness must have thought her beloved boy was making! It was all over now, but, when she dined with Bobby Pentyre, she did rather like seeing two-thirds of the people bowing to her and knowing that the rest were whispering, "Isn't that Sonia Dainton? Sonia O'Rane, I should say. Who's she with?" In her first season someone would only have said "Pentyre's got a very pretty girl with him."
But it was all over—with that night. And how petty, when you were flung against realities! To-morrow, if Pentyre dined at Claridge's, the idlers would nod to him and say to one another, "Pentyre reminds me. Usen't he to be rather lié with Sonia O'Rane? Someone was saying at lunch...." And it would all come out! At least, it wouldn't.... She didn't care a damn, if anyone knew the truth, but, when they whispered and the women pretended not to be listening for fear it was improper—listening all the time till their ears flopped out of their heads ...!
To-morrow—She started guiltily. To-morrow they would be expecting her at ten for the Belgian Refugee Committee. And she was lunching out with someone—her head ached too much to recollect who it was; she had promised to lunch and dine out for a fortnight, as she always did; luncheon was arranged for one o'clock at the Piccadilly Grill Room (so it must be some very young admirer!), because she had to go on to a charity performance at the Alhambra, where she was appearing in a tableau with Lady Sally Farwell and a crowd of other people—something eighteenth-centuryish, but she had never found out precisely what they were supposed to represent.... And the day after she was starting a great housing scheme for the refugees in London, begging for unoccupied houses with one hand and superfluous furniture with the other, bringing the two together. That was the kind of war-work she liked.... Sir Adolphus Erskine had promised her one of his cars, and she was going round to call on house agents in a new green and black hat with broad green ribbons at the back and a silk cloak bordered with Valenciennes lace.... Grayle had sat, beating a stick against his leg, while she chose it....
That was all over, too. A bigger woman, she supposed, would have gone on her way unperturbed, refusing to be frowned out of existence and regally contriving to place everyone else in the wrong—"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" in her rehabilitation. Though that was on the stage, of course; she had never seen it in real life.... Anyway, she could not sit on a committee with Violet Loring and know that she was saying to herself, "I can't make out why Jim didn't see through her." Jim never had seen through her, he would have cut off his hand to marry her, cut off both hands when she broke the engagement. But Violet Loring would think that God had stepped in just in time to save him—"You're well out of it, my dear! Rather even poor David than you."
It was a long time since she had concentrated her thoughts on David, but it was too late in the evening to fit him into his place. At least it was only half-past nine, but she was too tired to think. It was not much use going to bed, because she obviously could not sleep, but it would be something to turn the lights out. Undressing slowly, she discovered that she had not begun to unpack; all the things that she did not want would be at the top, and all the things that she wanted at the bottom. It really was not worth it.... She climbed into bed, wondering for a moment why the sheets were so warm and discovering that she had not taken off her stockings. As she pulled the pillow into the nape of her neck, a comb pressed hard against her head, and she found that she had not brushed her hair. "I suppose a man's like this, when he goes to bed drunk," she told herself. Then her eyes closed, and she fell asleep.
At two, five and seven she woke suddenly, wondering what the vague menace was that had frightened her. It stabbed her mind; her heart quickened its beat, and she lay panting until gradually she passed into a waking dream. At nine she was roused by the chambermaid, who said that a gentleman had called to know if Mrs. David O'Rane was staying in the hotel. He gave no name of his own, but hers was set out in printed capitals.