Later, after putting her into her taxi, he said through the window:
“You’ll destroy that scrap of paper, won’t you?”
“If you doubt me, I’ll give it you back now,” she replied rather sharply, thrusting her hand beneath her cloak.
What could ardent lover do but repudiate the charge of want of faith? She laughed, and answered in her most caressing tones:
“I’m glad, for where it is now it would be awfully awkward to get at.”
The taxi drove off. Godfrey re-entered the house, his young head full of the thought of the paper on which he had written lying warm, deep down, in her bare and sacred bosom.
Lady Edna drove home to her solitary house, and, without asking whether her husband was in or out, went straight to her bedroom. As soon as she could she dismissed her maid and sat in her dressing-gown for a long, long time, thinking as a woman thinks, when for the first time in her life she is not sure of herself, when she is all but at the parting of the ways and when each way seems to lead to catastrophe. As a cold, ambitious girl she had sent the Natural packing; now it had come galloping back. At last she rose and went to her dressing-table. On it lay the crumpled scrap of paper. She glanced at it. The figures and lines conveyed no meaning to her tired brain. What was the warfare in the world to the warfare in her soul? She couldn’t concern herself with the higher strategy to-night. To-morrow, when she was fresh, she would tackle the intricate scheme. She put the paper into a little secret drawer of her writing-table of which even her maid did not know the spring.
CHAPTER XXI
SHE would read the paper to-morrow, she had said. But on the morrow she awoke with a violent headache and stayed abed, and had only time to scramble into her clothes and attend a twelve o’clock committee meeting in Westminster. And for the remainder of the day, until she went to bed exhausted at midnight, she had not a minute to spare. The next morning she had her early appointment with Godfrey. She went forth into a raw air with a threat of autumn in it, and a slight drizzle from an overcast sky. The two-seater, with damp hood up, was waiting round the corner of the Square. She opened the door and jumped in, almost before he was aware of her approach, and rather hysterically flung her arms about him.
“Oh darling, be good to me! I’m feeling so tired and miserable.”