"Perhaps I have." Betty stood on guard with a steady face.
"Well, when you have--or if you have--remember never to let him be quite sure. It's the only way."
The two parted, with a mutually kindly feeling that surprised one as much as the other. Lady St. Craye drove home contrasting bitterly the excellence of her maxims with the ineptitude of her practice. She had let him know that she cared. And he had left her. That was two years ago. And, now that she had met him again, when she might have played the part she had recommended to that chit with the long hair--the part she knew to be the wise one--she had once more suffered passion to overcome wisdom, and had shown him that she loved him. And he had kissed her.
She blushed in the dusk of her carriage for the shame of that kiss.
But he had told that girl that he was engaged to her.
A delicious other flush replaced the blush of shame. Why should he have done that unless he really meant--? In that case the kiss was nothing to blush about. And yet it was. She knew it.
She had time to think in the days that followed, days that brought Temple more than once to her doors, but Vernon never.
Betty left alone let down her damp hair and tried to resume her drawing. But it would not do. The emotion of the interview was too recent. Her heart was beating still with anger, and resentment, and other feelings less easily named.
Vernon was to come to fetch her at seven. She would not face him. Let him go and dine with the woman he belonged to!
Betty went out at half-past six. She would not go to Garnier's, nor to Thirion's. That was where he would look for her.
She walked steadily on, down the boulevard. She would dine at some place she had never been to before. A sickening vision of that first night in Paris swam before her. She saw again the Café d'Harcourt, heard the voices of the women who had spoken to Paula, saw the eyes of the men who had been the companions of those women. In that rout the face of Temple shone--clear cut, severe. She remembered the instant resentment that had thrilled her at his protective attitude, remembered it and wondered at it a little. She would not have felt that now. She knew her Paris better than she had done then.
And with the thought, the face of Temple came towards her out of the crowd. He raised his hat in response to her frigid bow, and had almost passed her, when she spoke on an impulse that surprised herself.