A CAUSE CÉLÈBRE
"Conventional women--but was not the phrase tautological?"
GEORGE GISSING: "Born in Exile."
I always look back with regret to our return to London after
Commemoration. Our parting at the door of the Rodens' house in Cadogan
Square was more than the dispersal of a pleasant, youthful,
light-hearted gathering; it marked out a definite end to my first
careless, happy weeks in England, and foreshadowed a period of
suspense and heart-burning that separated old friends and strained old
alliances. As we shook hands and waved adieux, we were slipping
unconsciously into a future where none of us were to meet again on our
former frank, trustful footing.
I doubt if any of us recognised this at the time--not even the Seraph,
for a man is notoriously a bad judge in his own cause. Looking back
over the last six months, I appreciate that the seeds of trouble had
already been sown, and that I ought to have been prepared for much
that followed.
To begin with, the astonishing acrimony of speech and writing that
characterised both parties in the Suffrage controversy should have
warned me of the futility of trying to retain the friendship of Joyce
Davenant on the one hand and the Rodens on the other. Bitter were
their tongues and angry their hearts in the old, forgotten era of
demonstrations and hecklings; the bitterness increased with the
progress of the arson campaign, and its prompt, ruthless reprisals;
but I remember no political sensation equalling the suppressed,
vindictive anger of the days when the abduction policy was launched,
and no clue could be found to incriminate its perpetrators. I suffered
the fate of most neutral powers, and succeeded in arousing the
suspicions of both belligerents.
Again, the Wylton divorce proved--if proof were ever needed--that when
English Society has ostracised a woman, her sympathisers gain nothing
for themselves by championing her cause. They had better secure
themselves greetings in the market-place by leading the chorus of
moral condemnation. Elsie Wylton would scarcely have noticed the two
added voices, and the Seraph and I might have spared ourselves much
unnecessary discomfort. He was probably too young to appreciate that
Quixotism does not pay in England, while I--well, there is no fool
like a middle-aged fool.
Lastly, I ought to have seen the shadow cast by Sylvia's tropical
intimacy with the Seraph at Oxford. She was unquestionably
_intriguée_, and I should have seen it and been on my guard. Resist as
she might, there was something arresting in his other-world,
somnambulant attitude towards life; for him, at least, his dreams were
too real to be lightly dismissed. And his sensitive feminine sympathy
was something new to her, something strangely stimulating to a girl
who but half understood her own moods and ambitions. I have no doubt
that in their solitary passage back to Oxford she had unbent and
revealed more to him than to any other man, had unbent as far as any
woman of reserve can ever unbend to a man. Equally, I have no doubt
that in cold retrospect her passionate, uncontrolled pride exaggerated
the significance of her conduct, and magnified the moment of
unaffected friendliness into an humiliating self-betrayal.
The Seraph--it is clear--had not responded. I know now--indeed, I knew
at the time--that Sylvia had made an indelible impression on his
receptive, emotional nature. Her wilful, rebellious self-confidence
had galvanised him as every woman of strong character will galvanise a
man of hesitations and doubts, reservations, and self-criticism.
Knowing Sylvia, I find no difficulty in understanding the ascendancy
she had established over his mind; knowing him, I can well appreciate
his exasperating diffidence and self-depreciation. It never occurred
to him that Sylvia could forget his relative poverty, obscurity, and
their thousand points of conflict; it never dawned on her that he
could be held back by honourable scruples from accepting what she had
shown herself willing to offer. The Seraph came back from Oxford
absorbed and pre-occupied with haunting memories of Sylvia; with his
curious frankness he told her in so many words that she possessed his
mind to the exclusion of every other thought. There he had stopped
short--for no reason she could see, and it was not possible for her to
go further to meet him. Next to the Capitol stands the Tarpeian Rock.
I ought to have remembered that with Sylvia it was now crown or
gibbet, and that there was no room for platonic admirers.
With his genius for the unexpected the Seraph disappeared from our ken
for an entire week after our return to London. Gladys and I were
always running over to the Rodens' or receiving visits from Sylvia
and Philip; it appeared that he had forsaken Cadogan Square as
completely as Pont Street, and the unenthusiastic tone in which the
information was volunteered did not tempt me to prosecute further
inquiries. On about the fifth day I did pluck up courage to ask Lady
Roden if he had yet come to the surface, but so far from receiving an
intelligible answer I found myself undergoing rigorous examination
into his antecedents. "Who _is_ this Mr. Aintree?" I remember her
asking in her lifeless, faded voice. "Has he any relations? There used
to be a Sir John Aintree who was joint-master of the Meynell."
After a series of unsuccessful inquiries over the telephone, I set out
to make personal investigation. Sylvia had carried Gladys off to
Ranelagh, and as Robin offered his services as escort to the girls, I
felt no scruples in resigning my ward to her charge. For Sylvia, I am
glad to say, my responsibility had ceased, and I was at liberty to
proceed to Adelphi Terrace, and ascertain why at any hour of the day
or night I was met with the news that Mr. Aintree was in town, but
away from his flat, and had left no word when he would be back. I
called in at the club before trying his flat. The Seraph was not
there, but I found the polyglot Culling explaining for Gartside's
benefit certain of the more obvious drolleries of the current "Vie
Parisienne."
"Where did ye pick up yer French accent, Bob?" I heard him inquire
with feigned admiration. "In Soho? I wonder who dropped it there?"
Then he caught sight of me, and his face assumed an awful solemnity.
"'Corruptio optimi pessima!' I wonder ye've the courage to show
yerself among respectable men like me and Gartside."
I inquired if either of them knew of the Seraph's whereabouts, but the
question appeared to add fuel to Culling's indignation.
"Where is the Seraph?" he exclaimed. "Well ye may ask! His wings are
clipped, there's a dint in his halo, and his harp has its strings
broken. The Heavenly Choir----" He paused abruptly, seized a sheet of
foolscap and resumed his normal tone. "This'll be rather good--the
Heavenly Choir and our Seraph flung out like a common drunk same as
Gartside here.
'To bottomless perdition, there to dwell--
Why can't the club afford a decent pen?
You're our committeeman, Bob, you're to blame.
I always use blank verse for my complaints.--
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire.'"
JOHN MILTON: "Paradise Lost, Liber One."
I watched the Heavenly Choir being sketched. In uniform and figure the
Archangel Gabriel presented a striking resemblance to any Keeper of
the Peace at any Music Hall. An official braided coat bulged at the
shoulders with the pressure of two cramped wings, his peaked cap had
been knocked over one eye, and his halo--in Culling's words--was "all
anyhow." As the artist insisted on a companion picture to show the
Seraph's reception in Bottomless Perdition, I turned to Gartside for
enlightenment.
"It's been going on long enough to be getting serious," I was told. "A
solid week now."
"_What's_ been going on?" I exclaimed in despair. "Where are we? Above
all, where's the Seraph?"
"Isn't it telling you we are?" protested Culling. "It started on the
day you returned from your godless wanderings and prowled through
London like a lion seeking whom you might devour. 'Portrait of a
Gentleman--well known in Society--seeking whom he may devour,'" he
murmured to himself, stretching forth a hand for fresh foolscap. "And
it's been going on ever since. And nobody's had the courage to speak
to him about it. There you have the thing in a nutshell."
I turned despairingly to Gartside, and in time was successful in
extracting and piecing together an explanation of his dark references
to the Seraph. "Once upon a time," he began.
"When pigs were swine," Culling interrupted, "and monkeys chewed
tobacco."
"Shut up, Paddy! Once upon a time a girl named Elsie Davenant married
a man called Arnold Wylton. Perhaps she knows why she did it, but I'm
hanged if anybody else did. She was a nice enough girl by all
accounts, and Wylton--well, I expect you've heard some queer stories
about him, they're all true. After they'd been married--how long was
it, Paddy?"
"Oh, a few years--by the calendar," said Culling, eagerly taking up
the parable. "It's long enough she must have found 'em! Wylton used to
work in little spells of domesticity in the intervals of being
horse-whipped out of other people's houses, and disappearing abroad
while sundry little storms blew over. Morgan and Travers took in a new
partner and started a special 'Wylton Department' for settling his
actions out of court...."
"This is all fairly ancient history," I interposed.
"It's the extenuating circumstance," said Gartside.
Culling warmed oratorically to his work.
"In the fulness of time," he went on in the manner of the Ancient
Mariner, "Mrs. Wylton woke up and said, 'This is a one-sided
business.' Toby, ye're a bachelor. Let me tell you that married life
is a _mauvais quart d'heure_ made up of exquisite week-ends. While
Wylton dallied unobtrusively in Buda Pesth, giving himself out to be
the Hungarian correspondent of the _Baptist Family Herald_, Mrs.
Wylton spent her exquisite week-end at Deauville."
He paused delicately.
"Girls will be girls," sighed Gartside.
"A gay cavalry major, with that way they have in the army, made a
flying descent on Deauville. He'd been seen about with her in London
quite enough to cause comment. Good-natured friends asked Wylton why
he was vegetating in Pesth when he might be in Deauville; he came, he
saw, he stayed in the self same hotel as his wife...."
"Which curiously enough had been already chosen by the gay cavalry
major."
Culling shook his head over the innate depravity of human nature.
"You see the finish?" he inquired rhetorically. "They say the senior
partner in Morgan and Travers had a seizure when Wylton had finished
the last batch of cases in his own department, and strolled into the
private office to instruct proceedings for a petition."
"Six days ago, decree nisi was granted," said Gartside.
"Scene in Court: President expressing sympathy with Petitioner,"
murmured Culling, with quick pencil already at work on the
blotting-pad.
I lit a cigar to clear my head.
"Where does the Seraph come in?" I persisted like a man with an _idée
fixe_.
"In the sequel," said Gartside. "There is a right way of doing
everything, also a wrong. When one is divorced, one hides one's
diminished head...."
"I always do," said Culling.
"One grows a beard and goes to live in Kensington. Mrs. Wylton is
making the mistake of trying to brazen things out. 'You may cut me,'
she says, 'but ye canna brek me manly sperrit.' Consequently in every
place where she can be certain of attracting a crowd, Mrs. Wylton is
to be found in the front row of the stalls, very pretty, very quiet
and so unobtrusively dressed that you're almost tempted to damn her as
respectable."
He lit a cigarette and I took occasion to remind him that we had not
yet come in sight of the Seraph.
Culling took up the parable.
"Is she alone?" he asked in a husky whisper. "Sir, she is not! Who
took her to dinner last night at Dieudonné's, the night before at the
Savoy, the night before that at the Carlton? Who has been seen with
her at the Duke of York's, the Haymarket, the St. James'?"
"Who rides with her every summer morning in the Park?" cut in
Gartside. "It is our Seraph. Our foolish Seraph, and we lay at your
door the blame for his demoralisation. Seriously, Toby, somebody ought
to speak the word in season. He's getting talked about, and that sort
of flying in the face of public opinion doesn't do one damn's worth of
good. The woman's got to have her gruel and take her time over it.
She'll only put people's backs up by going on as she's doing at
present. Mind you, I'm sorry for her," he went on more gently. "In her
place I'd have done precisely the same thing, and I'd have done it
years ago. But I should have had the sense to recognise I'd got to
face the consequences."
I wondered for a short two seconds if it would be of the slightest
avail to proclaim my belief in Elsie Wylton's innocence. A glance at
Culling and Gartside convinced me of the futility.
"Where's the Seraph now?" I asked.
"With her. Any money you like. She lives with her sister in Chester
Square; you'll find him there."
I sent a boy off to telephone to Adelphi Terrace. Until his return
with the announcement that the Seraph was still away from home,
Gartside suggested the lines on which I was to admonish the young
offender.
"The gay cavalry major's prudently shipped himself back to India," he
said, "and he was a pretty shadowy figure to most people as it was.
What the Seraph has to understand is that he'll get all the discredit
of being an 'and other' if he ties himself to her strings in this way.
I only give you what everybody's saying."
I promised to ponder his advice, and after being reminded that Gladys
and I were due at his musical party the following week, and reminding
him that he was expected to lunch on my house-boat at Henley, we went
our several ways.
Wandering circuitously round the smoking-rooms and library on my way
to the hall, I had ample corroboration of what--in Gartside's
words--everybody was saying. The Wylton divorce was the one topic of
conversation. For the most part, I found Gartside's own tolerance to
the woman representative of the general feeling in the club: his
strictures on the folly of the Seraph's conduct had a good many
echoes, though two men had the detachment to praise his disinterested
behaviour. Of the rest, those who did not condemn opined that he was
too young to know any better.
The one discordant note was struck when I met Nigel Rawnsley in the
hall. Elsie Wylton was shot hellwards in one sentence and the Seraph
in another, but the burden of his discourse was reserved for the
sacramental nature of wedlock and the damnable heresy of divorce. I
was subjected to a lucid exposition of the Anglican doctrine of
marriage, initiated into the mysteries of the first three (or three
hundred) General Councils of the Church, presented with thumbnail
biographies of Arius and S. Athanasius, and impressed with the
necessity of unfrocking all priests who celebrated the marriage of
divorced persons. It was all very stimulating, and I found that half
my most prosaic friends were living in something that Rawnsley
damningly described as "a state of sin."
It was tea-time before I arrived at Chester Square. I suppose I had
never taken Gartside very seriously: the moment I saw Elsie and the
Seraph, my lot was unconditionally thrown in with the publicans and
sinners. She greeted me with the smile of a woman who has no care in
the world: then as she turned to ring the bell for tea, I caught the
expression of one who is passing through Purgatory on her way to Hell.
The Seraph's eyes were telegraphing a whole code-book. I walked to the
window so that she could not see my face, nor I hers.
"I thought you wouldn't mind my dropping in," I said as carelessly as
I could. "It was tea-time for one thing, and for another I wanted to
tell you that you've done about the pluckiest thing a woman can do.
Good luck to you! If there's anything I can do...."
Then we shook hands again, and I found her death-like placidity a good
deal harder to bear than if she had broken down or gone into
hysterics. I do not believe the Davenant women know how to cry:
Nature left the lachrymal sac out of their composition. Yet on
reflection I can see now that she was suffering less than in the days
six weeks before when the anticipation of the divorce lowered
menacingly over her head and haunted every waking moment. It is
curious to see how suspense cards down a woman's spirit while the
shock of a catastrophe seems actually to brace her and call forth
every reserve of strength. From this time till the day of my departure
from England, Elsie was indomitable.
"It's hard work at present," she said with a gentle, tired smile, "but
I'm going through with it."
That was what her father used to say when I climbed with him in
Trans-Caucasia. He would say it as we crawled and fought and bit our
way up a slippery face of rock, sheer as the side of a house. And he
was five and twenty years my senior.
"What are you doing to-night?" I asked.
"We were trying to make up our minds when you came in," said the
Seraph.
"Dinner somewhere, I suppose, and a theatre? What's on, Seraph? I'm
all alone to-night, and I want you and Elsie to dine with me."
Elsie was sitting with closed eyes, bathing her forehead with scent.
"Make it something that starts late," she said wearily. "I don't feel
I can stand many hours."
After a brief study of the theatrical advertisements in the _Morning
Post_ the Seraph went off to make arrangements over the telephone. I
took hold of Elsie's disengaged hand and tried in a clumsy, masculine
fashion to pump courage into her tired spirit.
"You must stick it out to the end of the Season," I told her. "It's
only a few more weeks, and then you can rest as long as you like.
Don't let people think they can drive you into hiding. If you do that,
you'll lose pride in yourself, and when you lose pride in yourself,
why should any one believe in you?"
"How many people believe in me now?"
"Not many. That's why I admire your pluck. But there's Joyce for one."
"Yes, Joyce," she assented slowly.
"And the Seraph for another."
"Yes, the Seraph."
"And me for a third."
I felt her trying to draw her hand away.
"I wonder if you do, or whether it's just because I'm a bit--hard
hit."
I let go the hand as she rose to blow out the spirit lamp. Standing
erect--blue-eyed, pale faced and golden haired--she was wonderfully
like Joyce, I thought, with her slim, black-draped figure and slender
white neck, but a Joyce who had drunk deep of tribulation.
"It's a pity you weren't ever at a boys' school," I said.
"Why?"
"If you had been, you'd know there are some boys who simply can't keep
themselves and their clothes clean, and others who can't get dirty or
untidy if they try. In time the grubby ones usually get cleaner, but
the boy who starts with a clean instinct never deteriorates into a
grub. The distinction holds good for both sexes. And it applies to
conduct as much as clothes. The Davenants can't help keeping clean.
I've known three in one generation and one in another."
I said it because I meant it. I should have said it just the same if
Elsie had had no sister Joyce.
The Seraph came back with Dick Davenant, and I tried to get him to
join us, but he was already engaged for dinner. Shortly afterwards I
found it was time to get home and change my clothes. In the hall I
found Joyce and pressed her into our party. It was a short, hurried
meeting, as she was saying good-bye to two colleagues or
fellow-conspirators when I appeared. I caught their names and looked
at them with some interest. One was the formidable Mrs. Millington, a
weather-beaten, stoutish woman of fifty with iron-grey hair cut short
to the neck, and double-lensed pince-nez. The other was an anæmic girl
of twenty--a Miss Draper--with fanatical eyes that watched Joyce's
every movement, and a little dry cough that told me her days of
agitation were numbered. When next we met she wiped her lips after
coughing.... Mrs. Millington I never saw again.
That night was my first effort in the vindication of Elsie Wylton. I
believe we dined at the Berkeley and went on to Daly's. The place is
immaterial; wherever we went we found--or so it seemed to our
over-sensitive, suspicious nerves--a slight hush, a movement of
turning bodies and craning necks, a whispered name. Elsie went through
it like a Royal Duchess opening a bazaar; laughing and talking with
the Seraph, turning to throw a word to Joyce or myself; untroubled,
indifferent--best of all, perfectly restrained. The hard-bought
actress-training of immemorial centuries should give woman some
superiority over man....
We certainly supped at the Carlton in a prominent position by the
door. I fancy no one missed seeing us. The Seraph knew everybody, of
course, and I had picked up a certain number of acquaintances in two
months. We bowed to every familiar form, and the familiar forms bowed
back to us. When they passed near our table we hypnotised them into
talking, and they brought their women-folk with them....
When supper was ended we moved outside for coffee and cigars, so that
none who had entered the supper room before us should leave without
running the gauntlet. We had our share of black looks and noses in
air, directed I suppose against Joyce as much as against her sister;
and many a mild husband must have submitted to a curtain lecture that
night on the text that no man will believe political or moral evil of
any woman with a pretty face. The older I get the truer I find that
text; I cannot remember the day when I was without the instinct
underlying such a belief.
At a quarter-past twelve Elsie began to flag, and we started our
preparations for returning home. As I waited for my bill--and swore a
private oath that Gartside should translate his sympathy into acts,
and join our moral-leper colony before the week was out--an unexpected
party emerged from the restaurant and passed us on their way to
collect cloaks. Gladys and Philip, Sylvia and Robin, driven home from
Ranelagh by the impossibility of securing a table for dinner, had
eaten sketchily at Cadogan Square, hurried to the Palace, and turned
in to the Carlton to make up for lost food.
The Seraph of course saw them first, rose up and bowed. I followed,
and both of us were rewarded by a gracious acknowledgment from Sylvia.
Then she caught sight of Joyce and Elsie, and her mouth straightened
itself and lost its smile. The change was slight, but I had been
expecting it. Another moment, and the straight lines broke to a slight
curve. Every one bowed to every one--Robin with his irrepressible,
instinctive good-humour, Philip more sedately, as befitted a public
man, the eldest son of the Attorney-General, and an avowed opponent of
the Militant Suffrage Movement. Then Sylvia passed on to get her
cloak, I arranged with Philip to take Gladys home, we bowed again and
parted.
The whole encounter had taken less than two minutes. It was more than
enough to make Elsie say she must decline my invitation to Henley.
"A public place is one thing, and a houseboat's another," she said.
"You wouldn't invite two people to stay with you if you knew the mere
presence of one was distasteful to the other."
"You've got to go the whole road," I said. "If the Rodens know me,
they've got to know my friends."
"We mustn't be in too much of a hurry," she answered. "I'm right,
aren't I, Joyce? There's no scandal about Joyce, but she's given up
visiting with the Rodens. It was beginning to get rather
uncomfortable."
The matter was compromised by the Seraph inviting Elsie to come to
Henley in an independent party of two. They would then secure as much
publicity as could be desired without causing any kind of
embarrassment to a private gathering.
I saw nothing of Sylvia until Gartside's Soirée Musicale three nights
later. The Seraph dined with us, and when Philip snatched Gladys from
under my wing almost before the car had turned into Carlton House
Terrace, I retired with him into an inviting balcony and watched the
female side of human nature at work.
Sylvia stood twelve feet from us, looking radiant. Instinctive wisdom
had led her to dress--as ever--in white, and to wear no jewellery but
pearls. Her black hair seemed silkier and more luxuriant than ever;
her dark eyes flashed with a certain proud vitality and assurance.
Nigel Rawnsley was talking to her, talking well, and paying her the
compliment of talking up to her level. I watched her give thrust for
thrust, parry for parry; all exquisite sword play.... His enemies
called Nigel a prig, even his friends complained he was overbearing; I
liked him, as I contrive to like most men, and only wish he could meet
more people of his own mental calibre. He had met one in Sylvia; there
was no button to his foil when he fenced with her.
"Thus far and no farther," I murmured.
The Seraph looked up, but I had only been thinking aloud. I was
wondering why she painted that sign over her door when Nigel
approached. A career of brilliant achievement and more brilliant
promise, her own chosen faith and ritual, ambition enough and to
spare--Nigel entered the lists well armed, and she was the only one
who could humanise him. I wondered what gulf of temperamental
antipathy parted them and placed him without the pale....
They talked till Culling interposed his claim for attention,
preferring the request with triplicated brogue. From time to time
Gartside strayed away from his other guests and shivered a lance in
deferential tourney. As I watched his fine figure, and looked from him
to the irrepressible Culling, and from Culling to Rawnsley's
clear-cut, intellectual face, I asked myself for the thousandth time
what indescribable affinity could be equally lacking in three men
otherwise so dissimilar.
With light-hearted carelessness she guarded the sword's length of
territory that divided them. It was adroit, nimble fencing, but I
wondered how much it amused her. Not many women can resist the
age-long fascination of playing off one admirer against another; but I
should have written Sylvia down among the exceptions. She did not want
admiration.... Then I remembered Oxford and read into her conduct the
first calculated stages in the Seraph's castigation. If this were her
object, it failed; the Seraph was ignorant of the very nature of
jealousy. In the light of their subsequent meeting, I doubt if this
were even her motive.
We had both received a distant bow as we entered the room, but not a
word had been vouchsafed us. I am afraid my nature is too indolent to
be greatly upset by this kind of neglect. The Seraph, I could see,
grew rather unhappy when his presence was overlooked every time he
came within speaking distance. It was not till the end of the evening
that she unbent. I had promised to take Gladys on to a ball, and at
eleven I came out of hiding and went in search of her. Culling had
just been told off to find Robin, and Sylvia stood alone.
"Are you going on anywhere?" she asked the Seraph when they had the
room to themselves.
"It's the Marlthrops, isn't it?" he asked.
"And Lady Carsten. Robin and I are going there. Are you coming?"
The Seraph's hand went to his pocket and made pretence of weighing
three or four invitations in the balance. Finally he selected the
Carsten card and glanced at it with an air of doubt.
"Will my presence be welcome?" he asked.
"You must ask Lady Carsten, she's invited you."
"Welcome to you?"
"It depends on yourself."
"What must I do?"
Sylvia pursed up her mouth and looked at him with head on one side.
"Be a little more particular in the company you keep."
"I usually am."
"With some startling lapses."
"I'm not aware of any."
Sylvia drew herself up to her full height.
"How have you spent the last week?"
"In a variety of ways."
"In a variety of company?"
"The same nearly all the time."
She nodded.
"This is my objection."
"If _she_ doesn't object...." A dawning flush on Sylvia's cheek warned
him to leave the sentence unfinished.
"I'm giving you advice for your own sake because, apparently, you've
no one else to advise you," she said with the slow, elaborate
carelessness of one who is with difficulty keeping her temper. "You've
spent the last week thrusting yourself under every one's notice in
company with a woman who's just been divorced from her husband. Every
one's seen you, every one's talking about you. If you like that sort
of notoriety...."
"Can it be avoided?"
"You can drop the woman."
"She's none too many friends."
"She's one too many."
"I cannot agree."
"Then you put yourself on her level."
"I should be proud to rank with her."
Sylvia paused a moment to steady her voice.
"I've got a temper," she remarked with exaggerated indifference, "it's
never wise for anybody to rouse it, and many people would be annoyed
if you talked to them as you're talking to me. I--simply don't think
it's worth it, but can you wonder if I ask you to choose between her
and me?"
The Seraph's face and voice were grave.
"The choice seems unnecessary," he said.
"You must take it from me that I have no wish to be seen about with a
man who allows his name to be coupled with a woman of that kind."
"What kind, Sylvia?"
"You know my meaning."
"But your meaning is wrong."
"I mean an ugly word for an ugly sin. A woman of the kind that breaks
the Seventh Commandment."
The Seraph began tearing his card in narrow strips.
"Elsie Wylton didn't," he said quietly.
"She told you so?"
"I didn't need telling."
Sylvia's expression implored pity on the credulity of man. The Seraph
was still nervously fingering his card, but no signs of emotion
ruffled her calm. The face was slightly flushed, but she bent her head
to hide it.
"Part friends, Seraph," she said at last, "if you're not coming to the
Carstens'. Think it over, and you'll find every one will give you the
same advice."
"I dare say." He pocketed the torn card and prepared to accompany her.
"What would you do in my place if you believed the woman innocent?"
Sylvia shirked the question.
"Innocent women don't get into those positions."
"It is possible."
"How can she prove her innocence?"
"How do you prove her guilt?"
"I don't attempt to go behind what the Court finds."
At the door the Seraph hesitated.
"To-night's only an armistice, Sylvia," he stipulated. "I must have
time to think. I'm not committed either way."
She gave him her old friendly smile.
"If you like." Then the smile melted away. "My ultimatum comes in
force to-morrow morning, though. You must make up your mind then."