"My dear girl, I know the precise amount of Stanistreet's income. Money
can't be any object to him. But perhaps you've a soul above boxes at the
'Criterion,' and champagne suppers afterwards, and the rest of it?"
"I have, unfortunately. But there wasn't any champagne." Her indifferent
voice gave the lie to her beating pulses. Between playing and fighting
there is only a difference of degree.
"Will you kindly tell me why you selected Stanistreet of all people for
this business?"
"I didn't select him--he was always there."
"And if it hadn't been Stanistreet it would have been somebody else? I
see. I hope you appreciate the peculiar advantages of his society?"
"I do. Louis is a gentleman, though he is your friend. He knows how to
talk to women."
"If he doesn't it is not for want of practice. I could swallow all this,
Molly, if you were a little girl just out of the schoolroom; but--I
don't think you've much to learn."
Mrs. Nevill Tyson's eyes flashed. The play had turned to deadly earnest.
"Not much, thanks to you," said she. Her voice sank. "Louis was good to
me."
"Was he? 'Good' to you--How extremely touching! Pray, were you good to
him?"
"No--no." She shook her head remorsefully. "I wish I had been."
Tyson knitted his brows and looked at her. He had not quite made up his
mind.
"Do you know, I don't altogether believe in your refreshing näiveté.
Stanistreet is not 'good' to pretty women for nothing. I know, and you
know, that a woman who has been seen with him as you apparently have
been, is not supposed to have a character to lose."
She rose to her feet and faced him. "How could you? Oh, how could you?"
He shrank from her, without the least attempt to conceal his repulsion.
"If you look in the glass you'll see."
She turned mechanically and saw the reflection of her face, all flushed
as it was and distorted, the eyes fierce with passion. It was like the
sudden leaping forth of her soul; and Mrs. Nevill Tyson's soul, after
three days' intercourse with her husband's, was not a thing to trust
implicitly. Without sinning it seemed unconsciously to reflect his sin.
I can not tell you how that was; marriage is a great mystery.
She understood him, though imperfectly; she understood many things
now. Oh, he was right--she looked the part; no wonder that he hated
her. She sat down and covered her face with her hands, as if to shut
out that momentary vision of herself. Herself and not herself. What she
saw was something that had never been. But it was something that might
be--herself, as Tyson alone had power to make her. All this came to her
as an unexplained, confused terror, a trouble of the nerves; there was no
reasoning, no idea; it was all too new.