He sprang from bed and picked them up. What could they possibly mean?
They were her roses, certainly--he remembered she wore the dressing-gown
that first evening at Dover, when he had gone to her to give her the
gardenias. And they certainly had not been there when at six o'clock he
had come in. He would in that case have seen them against the pale
carpet.
For one exquisite moment he thought they were a message and then he
noticed the ribbon had been wrenched off and was torn.
No, they were no conscious message, but they did mean that she had been
in his room while he slept.
Why had she done this thing? He knew she hated him--it was no
acting--and she had left him the night' before even unusually incensed.
What possible reason could she have, then, for coming into his room? He
felt wild with excitement. He would see if, as usual, the door between
them was locked. He tried it gently. Yes, it was.
And Zara heard him from her side, and stiffened in her bed with all the
expression of a fierce wolfhound putting its hackles up.
Yes, the danger of the ways of men was not over! If she had not
unconsciously remembered to lock the door when she had returned from her
terrifying adventure he would have come in!
So these two thrilled with different emotions and trembled, and there
was the locked harrier between them. And then Tristram rang for his
valet and ordered his bath. He would dress quickly, and ask casually if
she would breakfast in the sitting-room. It was so late, almost eleven,
and they could have it at twelve upstairs--not in the restaurant as he
had yesterday intended. He must find out about the roses; he could not
endure to pass the whole day in wonder and doubt.
And Zara, too, started dressing. It was better under the circumstances
to be armed at all points, and she felt safer and calmer with Henriette
in the room.
So a few minutes before twelve they met in the sitting-room.
Her whole expression was on the defensive: he saw that at once.
The waiters would be coming in with the breakfast soon. Would there be
time to talk to her, or had he better postpone it until they were
certain to be alone? He decided upon this latter course, and just said a
cold "Good morning," and turned to the _New York Herald_ and looked at
the news.
Zara felt more reassured.
So they presently sat down to their breakfast, each ready to play the
game.
They spoke of the theaters--the one they had arranged to go to this
Saturday night was causing all Paris to laugh.
"It will be a jolly good thing to laugh," Tristram said--and Zara
agreed.
He made no allusion to the events of the night before, and she hardly
spoke at all. And at last the repast was over, and the waiters had left
the room.
Tristram got up, after his coffee and liqueur, but he lit no cigar; he
went to one of the great windows which look out on the Colonne Vendôme,
and then he came back. Zara was sitting upon the heliotrope Empire sofa
and had picked up the paper again.
He stood before her, with an expression upon his face which ought to
have melted any woman.
"Zara," he said softly, "I want you to tell me, why did you come into my
room?"
Her great eyes filled with startled horror and surprise, and her white
cheeks grew bright pink with an exquisite flush.
"I?"--and she clenched her hands. How did he know? Had he seen her,
then? But he evidently did know, and there was no use to lie. "I was
so--frightened--that--"
Tristram took a step nearer and sat down by her side. He saw the
confession was being dragged from her, and he gloried in it and would
not help her out.
She moved further from him, then, with grudging reluctance, she
continued,
"There can be such unpleasant quarrels with those horrible men. It--was
so very late--I--I--wished to be sure that you had come safely in."
Then she looked down, and the rose died out of her face, leaving it very
white.
And if Tristram's pride in the decision he had come to, on the fatal
wedding night, that she must make the first advances before he would
again unbend, had not held him, he would certainly have risked
everything and clasped her in his arms. As it was, he resisted the
intense temptation to do so, and made himself calm, while he answered,
"It mattered to you, then, in some way, that I should not come to harm?"
He was still sitting on the sofa near her, and that magnetic essence
which is in propinquity appealed to her; ignorant of all such emotions
as she was she only knew something had suddenly made her feel nervous,
and that her heart was thumping in her side.
"Yes, of course it mattered," she faltered, and then went on coldly, as
he gave a glad start; "scandals are so unpleasant--scenes and all those
things are so revolting. I had to endure many of them in my former
life."
Oh! so that was it! Just for fear of a scandal and because she had known
disagreeable things! Not a jot of feeling for himself! And Tristram got
up quickly and walked to the fireplace. He was cut to the heart.
The case was utterly hopeless, he felt. He was frozen and stung each
time he even allowed himself to be human and hope for anything. But he
was a strong man, and this should be the end of it. He would not be
tortured again.
He took the little bunch of flowers out of his pocket and handed it to
her quietly, while his face was full of pain.
"Here is the proof you left me of your kind interest," he told her.
"Perhaps your maid will miss it and wish to sew it on." And then without
another word he went out of the room.
Zara, left alone, sat staring into the fire. What did all this mean? She
felt very unhappy, but not angry or alarmed. She did not want to hurt
him. Had she been very unkind? After all, he had behaved, in comparison
to Ladislaus, with wonderful self-control--and--yes, supposing he were
not quite a sensual brute she had been very hard. She knew what pride
meant; she had abundance herself, and she realized for the first time
how she must have been stinging his.
But there were facts which could not be got over. He had married her for
her uncle's money and then shown at once that her person tempted him,
when it could not be anything else.
She got up and walked about the room. There was a scent of him
somewhere--the scent of a fine cigar. She felt uneasy of she knew not
what. Did she wish him to come back? Was she excited? Should she go out?
And then, for no reason on earth, she suddenly burst into tears.
* * * * *
They met for dinner, and she herself had never looked or been more icy
cold than Tristram was. They went down into the restaurant and there, of
course, he encountered some friends dining, too, in a merry party; and
he nodded gayly to them and told her casually who they were, and then
went on with his dinner. His manner had lost its constraint, it was just
casually indifferent. And soon they started for the theater, and it was
he who drew as far away as he could, when they got into the automobile.
They had a box--and the piece had begun. It was one of those impossibly
amusing Paris farces, on the borderland of all convention but so
intensely comic that none could help their mirth, and Tristram shook
with laughter and forgot for the time that he was a most miserable young
man. And even Zara laughed. But it did not melt things between them.
Tristram's feelings had been too wounded for any ordinary circumstances
to cause him to relent.
"Do you care for some supper?" he said coldly when they came out. But
she answered. "No," so he took her back, and as far as the lift where he
left her, politely saying "Good night," and she saw him disappear
towards the door, and knew he had again gone out.
And going on to the sitting-room alone, she found the English mail had
come in, and there were the letters on the table, at least a dozen for
Tristram, as she sorted them out--a number in women's handwriting--and
but two for herself. One was from her uncle, full of agreeable
congratulations subtly expressed; and the other, forwarded from Park
Lane, from Mirko, as yet ignorant of her change of state, a small,
funny, pathetic letter that touched her heart. He was better, and again
able to go out, and in a fortnight Agatha, the little daughter of the
Morleys, would be returning, and he could play with her. That might be a
joy--girls were not so tiresome and did not make so much noise as boys.
Zara turned to the piano, which she had not yet opened, and sat down and
comforted herself with the airs she loved; and the maid who listened,
while she waited for her mistress to be undressed, turned up her eyes in
wonder.
_"Quel drôle de couple!"_ she said.
And Tristram reencountered his friends and went off with them to sup.
Her ladyship was tired, he told them, and had gone to bed. And two of
the Englishwomen who knew him quite well teased him and said how
beautiful his bride was and how strange-looking, and what an iceberg he
must be to be able to come out to supper and leave her alone! And they
wondered why he then smiled cynically.
"For," said one to the other on their way home, "the new Lady Tancred is
perfectly beautiful! Fancy, Gertrude, Tristram leaving her for a minute!
And did you ever see such a face? It looks anything but cold."
Zara was wide-awake when, about two, he came in. She heard him in the
sitting-room and suddenly became conscious that her thoughts had been
with him ever since she went to bed, and not with Mirko and his letter.
She supposed he was now reading his pile of correspondence--he had such
numbers of fond friends! And then she heard him shut the door, and go
round into his room; but the carpets were very thick and she heard no
more.
If she could have seen what happened beyond that closed door, would it
have opened her eyes, or made her happy? Who can tell?
For Higgins, with methodical tidiness, had emptied the pockets of the
coat his master had worn in the day, and there on top of a letter or two
and a card-case was one tiny pink rose, a wee bud that had become
detached from the torn bunch.
And when Tristram saw it his heart gave a great bound. So it had stayed
behind, when he had returned the others, and was there now to hurt him
with remembrance of what might have been! He was unable to control the
violent emotion which shook him. He went to the window and opened it
wide: the moon was rather over, but still blazed in the sky. Then he
bent down and passionately kissed the little bud, while a scorching mist
gathered in his eyes.