“What does that prove? There were fifty ways of finding out. It’s the kind of thing one can easily do.”
Flamel glanced at him with contempt. “Our ideas probably differ as to what a man can easily do. It would not have been easy for me.”
Glennard’s anger vented itself in the words uppermost in his thought. “It may, then, interest you to hear that my wife DOES know about the letters—has known for some months….”
“Ah,” said the other, slowly. Glennard saw that, in his blind clutch at a weapon, he had seized the one most apt to wound. Flamel’s muscles were under control, but his face showed the undefinable change produced by the slow infiltration of poison. Every implication that the words contained had reached its mark; but Glennard felt that their obvious intention was lost in the anguish of what they suggested. He was sure now that Flamel would never have betrayed him; but the inference only made a wider outlet for his anger. He paused breathlessly for Flamel to speak.
“If she knows, it’s not through me.” It was what Glennard had waited for.
“Through you, by God? Who said it was through you? Do you suppose I leave it to you, or to anybody else, for that matter, to keep my wife informed of my actions? I didn’t suppose even such egregious conceit as yours could delude a man to that degree!” Struggling for a foothold in the small landslide of his dignity, he added, in a steadier tone, “My wife learned the facts from me.”
Flamel received this in silence. The other’s outbreak seemed to have reinforced his self-control, and when he spoke it was with a deliberation implying that his course was chosen. “In that case I understand still less—”
“Still less—?”
“The meaning of this.” He pointed to the check. “When you began to speak I supposed you had meant it as a bribe; now I can only infer it was intended as a random insult. In either case, here’s my answer.”
He tore the slip of paper in two and tossed the fragments across the desk to Glennard. Then he turned and walked out of the office.
Glennard dropped his head on his hands. If he had hoped to restore his self-respect by the simple expedient of assailing Flamel’s, the result had not justified his expectation. The blow he had struck had blunted the edge of his anger, and the unforeseen extent of the hurt inflicted did not alter the fact that his weapon had broken in his hands. He saw now that his rage against Flamel was only the last projection of a passionate self-disgust. This consciousness did not dull his dislike of the man; it simply made reprisals ineffectual. Flamel’s unwillingness to quarrel with him was the last stage of his abasement.
In the light of this final humiliation his assumption of his wife’s indifference struck him as hardly so fatuous as the sentimental resuscitation of his past. He had been living in a factitious world wherein his emotions were the sycophants of his vanity, and it was with instinctive relief that he felt its ruins crash about his head.
It was nearly dark when he left his office, and he walked slowly homeward in the complete mental abeyance that follows on such a crisis. He was not aware that he was thinking of his wife; yet when he reached his own door he found that, in the involuntary readjustment of his vision, she had once more become the central point of consciousness.
XIII
It had never before occurred to him that she might, after all, have missed the purport of the document he had put in her way. What if, in her hurried inspection of the papers, she had passed it over as related to the private business of some client? What, for instance, was to prevent her concluding that Glennard was the counsel of the unknown person who had sold the “Aubyn Letters.” The subject was one not likely to fix her attention—she was not a curious woman.
Glennard at this point laid down his fork and glanced at her between the candle-shades. The alternative explanation of her indifference was not slow in presenting itself. Her head had the same listening droop as when he had caught sight of her the day before in Flamel’s company; the attitude revived the vividness of his impression. It was simple enough, after all. She had ceased to care for him because she cared for someone else.
As he followed her upstairs he felt a sudden stirring of his dormant anger. His sentiments had lost all their factitious complexity. He had already acquitted her of any connivance in his baseness, and he felt only that he loved her and that she had escaped him. This was now, strangely enough, his dominating thought: the consciousness that he and she had passed through the fusion of love and had emerged from it as incommunicably apart as though the transmutation had never taken place. Every other passion, he mused, left some mark upon the nature; but love passed like the flight of a ship across the waters.
She sank into her usual seat near the lamp, and he leaned against the chimney, moving about with an inattentive hand the knick-knacks on the mantel.
Suddenly he caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She was looking at him. He turned and their eyes met.
He moved across the room and stood before her.
“There’s something that I want to say to you,” he began in a low tone.
She held his gaze, but her color deepened. He noticed again, with a jealous pang, how her beauty had gained in warmth and meaning. It was as though a transparent cup had been filled with wine. He looked at her ironically.
“I’ve never prevented your seeing your friends here,” he broke out. “Why do you meet Flamel in out-of-the-way places? Nothing makes a woman so cheap—”
She rose abruptly and they faced each other a few feet apart.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I saw you with him last Sunday on the Riverside Drive,” he went on, the utterance of the charge reviving his anger.
“Ah,” she murmured. She sank into her chair again and began to play with a paper-knife that lay on the table at her elbow.
Her silence exasperated him.
“Well?” he burst out. “Is that all you have to say?”
“Do you wish me to explain?” she asked, proudly.
“Do you imply I haven’t the right to?”
“I imply nothing. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. I went for a walk with Mr. Flamel because he asked me to.”
“I didn’t suppose you went uninvited. But there are certain things a sensible woman doesn’t do. She doesn’t slink about in out-of-the-way streets with men. Why couldn’t you have seen him here?”
She hesitated. “Because he wanted to see me alone.”
“Did he, indeed? And may I ask if you gratify all his wishes with equal alacrity?”
“I don’t know that he has any others where I am concerned.” She paused again and then continued, in a lower voice that somehow had an under-note of warning. “He wished to bid me good-by. He’s going away.”
Glennard turned on her a startled glance. “Going away?”
“He’s going to Europe to-morrow. He goes for a long time. I supposed you knew.”
The last phrase revived his irritation. “You forget that I depend on you for my information about Flamel. He’s your friend and not mine. In fact, I’ve sometimes wondered at your going out of your way to be so civil to him when you must see plainly enough that I don’t like him.”
Her answer to this was not immediate. She seemed to be choosing her words with care, not so much for her own sake as for his, and his exasperation was increased by the suspicion that she was trying to spare him.
“He was your friend before he was mine. I never knew him till I was married. It was you who brought him to the house and who seemed to wish me to like him.”
Glennard gave a short laugh. The defence was feebler than he had expected: she was certainly not a clever woman.
“Your deference to my wishes is really beautiful; but it’s not the first time in history that a man has made a mistake in introducing his friends to his wife. You must, at any rate, have seen since then that my enthusiasm had cooled; but so, perhaps, has your eagerness to oblige me.”