"I cannot remain out of bed to hear stuff of this kind!" I exclaimed. "Melodrama is only excusable when it is convincing."
"Don't you be too sure that you won't be convinced!" she cried, springing up and facing me. The ermine coat, drooping half off her arms and back, fell to the ground and left her bare-shouldered and with heaving breast. The rose in her hair trembled, and two normally pale cheeks were lit each with a single spot of burning colour. The weakness that underlay the softness of her mouth had vanished, and her eyes, grown angry and hot, had lost their beauty. "Will you come and see me, I wonder, when I'm living with Peter?" she asked flauntingly.
"I shall not," I answered. "I may say that this kind of talk——"
"But you wouldn't mind seeing him?" she interrupted. "This is all right in a man. David can go off with that woman——"
"Good-night, Mrs. O'Rane," I said, holding out my hand.
Like everyone else, I sometimes feel intuitively when people are speaking for effect. Mrs. O'Rane spoke purely for effect when she boasted of the times that she had been to call on Beresford; she was still speaking for effect when I warned her against being melodramatic, yet sincerity crept in when she referred to her husband. I hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. For her to be jealous of Hilda Merryon presupposed that she was not so indifferent to O'Rane as she pretended; even to feign suspicion argued an unbalanced mind.
"Good-night," I repeated, as she stood ostentatiously refusing to take my hand. "You had better let me see you home, though."
"I'm not coming home. I won't be ordered about! You advise me and find fault with me and insult me.... Mr. Stornaway, let me tell you this. You've been—poking your nose into my affairs for some time, so I'm sure you've a right to know everything. You side with David and think everything he does is wonderful, perfect, magnificent. Well, I don't. I know I'm vain; and I'm vain enough to think he's not treating me as I'm entitled to be treated. He'll be coming home in a fortnight. I wrote to him to-day and asked him if he wanted to see me. If he does, he can. If he wants me and not the scourings of the London streets.... If not, if he doesn't love me enough for that, I shall look for someone who does."
I ended my succession of unsuccessful starts and reached the door. Mrs. O'Rane strode after me with arms akimbo.
"You don't believe it!" she cried passionately. "You don't think I dare!"