Beyond Part 39

"Oh, has she divorced you?"

"No. Stop talking of her; stop talking, I say!"

Daphne Wing, still motionless in the centre of her little crowded dressing-room said, in a matter-of-fact voice:

"You are polite, aren't you? It's funny; I can't tell whether I'm glad to see you. I had a bad time, you know; and Mrs. Fiorsen was an angel.

Why do you come to see me now?"

Exactly! Why had he come? The thought flashed through him: 'She'll help me to forget.' And he said:

"I was a great brute to you, Daphne. I came to make up, if I can."

"Oh, no; you can't make up--thank you!" A shudder ran through her, and she began drawing on her gloves. "You taught me a lot, you know. I ought to be quite grateful. Oh, you've grown a little beard! D'you think that improves you? It makes you look rather like Mephistopheles, I think."

Fiorsen stared fixedly at that perfectly shaped face, where a faint, underdone pink mingled with the fairness of the skin. Was she mocking him? Impossible! She looked too matter of fact.

"Where do you live now?" he said.

"I'm on my own, in a studio. You can come and see it, if you like."

"With pleasure."

"Only, you'd better understand. I've had enough of love."

Fiorsen grinned.

"Even for another?" he said.

Daphne Wing answered calmly:

"I wish you would treat me like a lady."

Fiorsen bit his lip, and bowed.

"May I have the pleasure of giving you some tea?"

"Yes, thank you; I'm very hungry. I don't eat lunch on matinee-days; I find it better not. Do you like my Ophelia dance?"

"It's artificial."

"Yes, it IS artificial--it's done with mirrors and wire netting, you know. But do I give you the illusion of being mad?" Fiorsen nodded. "I'm so glad. Shall we go? I do want my tea."

She turned round, scrutinized herself in the gla.s.s, touched her hat with both hands, revealing, for a second, all the poised beauty of her figure, took a little bag from the back of a chair, and said:

"I think, if you don't mind going on, it's less conspicuous. I'll meet you at Ruffel's--they have lovely things there. Au revoir."

In a state of bewilderment, irritation, and queer meekness, Fiorsen pa.s.sed down Coventry Street, and entering the empty Ruffel's, took a table near the window. There he sat staring before him, for the sudden vision of Gyp sitting on that oaken chest, at the foot of her bed, had blotted the girl clean out. The attendant coming to take his order, gazed at his pale, furious face, and said mechanically:

"What can I get you, please?"

Looking up, Fiorsen saw Daphne Wing outside, gazing at the cakes in the window. She came in.

"Oh, here you are! I should like iced coffee and walnut cake, and some of those marzipan sweets--oh, and some whipped cream with my cake. Do you mind?" And, sitting down, she fixed her eyes on his face and asked:

"Where have you been abroad?"

"Stockholm, Budapest, Moscow, other places."

"How perfect! Do you think I should make a success in Budapest or Moscow?"

"You might; you are English enough."

"Oh! Do you think I'm very English?"

"Utterly. Your kind of--" But even he was not quite capable of finis.h.i.+ng that sentence--"your kind of vulgarity could not be produced anywhere else." Daphne Wing finished it for him:

"My kind of beauty?"

Fiorsen grinned and nodded.

"Oh, I think that's the nicest thing you ever said to me! Only, of course, I should like to think I'm more of the Greek type--pagan, you know."

She fell silent, casting her eyes down. Her profile at that moment, against the light, was very pure and soft in line. And he said:

"I suppose you hate me, little Daphne? You ought to hate me."

Daphne Wing looked up; her round, blue-grey eyes pa.s.sed over him much as they had been pa.s.sing over the marzipan.

"No; I don't hate you--now. Of course, if I had any love left for you, I should. Oh, isn't that Irish? But one can think anybody a rotter without hating them, can't one?"

Fiorsen bit his lips.

"So you think me a 'rotter'?"

Daphne Wing's eyes grew rounder.

"But aren't you? You couldn't be anything else--could you?--with the sort of things you did."

"And yet you don't mind having tea with me?"

Daphne Wing, who had begun to eat and drink, said with her mouth full:

"You see, I'm independent now, and I know life. That makes you harmless."

Fiorsen stretched out his hand and seized hers just where her little warm pulse was beating very steadily. She looked at it, changed her fork over, and went on eating with the other hand. Fiorsen drew his hand away as if he had been stung.

"Ah, you HAVE changed--that is certain!"

"Yes; you wouldn't expect anything else, would you? You see, one doesn't go through that for nothing. I think I was a dreadful little fool--" She stopped, with her spoon on its way to her mouth--"and yet--"