"And what inducement can you offer?" I asked him brutally.
He spread out his hands with a shrug.
"What inducement did I offer before? We've been in love with each other so long! At one time she was actually engaged to another man.... But there was something constant and unchanging. She didn't forget him or hate him, but in time she had adjusted herself and come back to the thing that had always been there, hidden and unchanged.... So now, isn't it possible that, when the last six months fall into their proper perspective, when the ghosts no longer rise up——"
"How many people have you known to marry a second time after they've been divorced?"
"But there's no reason why they shouldn't."
"In fact they don't," I said.
I believe that George delivered himself of his message within about three days. I believe, further, that he descended to bribe some smirking kitchen-maid and stood through a downpour of rain to seize the opportunity. Mrs. O'Rane masked any surprise that she felt—I suppose that she must have been taking part in many unexpected meetings,—thanked him for troubling to come and transferred her attention to the wind-screen, as a choleric voice remarked, "Now, young man, when you've quite finished talking to my chauffeur!"
The meeting confirmed my own diagnosis. The play was ended, and, if I concerned myself with wondering what O'Rane and his wife would do with the remainder of their lives, I felt that this would be a new play, no continuation of the first. The brief scandal had flickered out as abruptly as it had flared up. Lady Maitland—my barometer and sounding-board—announced to Bertrand across the length of a considerable table that she had seen darling Sonia, who had really turned over a new leaf; it was the best thing in the world; she was taking the war seriously at last.
"Do you know, that dear child is never off duty Sundays or week-days, night or day?" she confided. "You try to get her to lunch or dine—she'll tell you frankly that it's not the least use promising, because, if her General wants her, out she has to go and she may be driving for him all night. I don't see how she can keep it up—not seeing anyone, you know, or doing anything, and after the life she had been leading. Of course, she was really very naughty about the way she did it—all in a night, you know—threw everybody over—I was running an entertainment on behalf of my society, and she simply spoilt one tableau.... But then that's so like darling Sonia."
"She's less of a fool than I thought," was Bertrand's comment to me. "No awkward questions, nobody to meet her and ask them! Can't live at home when she has to be ready with the car at a moment's notice.... I hope General Sir Andrew Lampwood has broad shoulders.... She's snug and secure till the war's over, and God knows when that will be."