Bella Donna. Robert Hichens
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characters, did not hold converse with his own, like a man who talks to himself in an unlighted room.
She smiled.
"Few women do, if they have any."
"Is any woman without them?"
"Yes, one."
"Name her."
"The absolutely good woman."
For a moment he was silent, struck to silence by the fierceness of her cynicism, a fierceness which had leapt suddenly out of her as a drawn sword leaps from its sheath.
"I don't acknowledge that, Mrs. Chepstow," he said—and at this moment perhaps he was the man talking to himself in the dark, as Nigel often was.
"Of course not. No man would."
"Why not?"
"Men seldom name, even to themselves, the weapons by which they are conquered. But women know what those weapons are."
"The Madame Marneffes, but not the Baroness Hulots."
"A Baroness Hulot never counts."
"Is it really clever of you to generalize about men? Don't you differentiate among us at all?"
He spoke entirely without pique, of which he was quite unconscious.
"I do differentiate," she replied. "But only sometimes, not always. There are broad facts which apply to men, however different they may be from one another. There are certain things which all men feel, and feel in much the same way."
"Nigel Armine and I, for instance?"
A sudden light—was it a light of malice?—flashed in her brilliant eyes.
"Yes, even Mr. Armine and you."
"I shall not ask you what they are."
"Perhaps the part of you which is woman has informed you."
Before she said "woman" she had paused. He felt that the word she had thought of, and had wished to use, was "Jewish." Her knowledge of him, while he disliked it because he disliked her, stirred up the part of him which was mental into an activity which he enjoyed. And the enjoyment, which she felt, increased her sense of her own value. Conversation ran easily between them. He discovered, what he had already half suspected, that, though not strictly intellectual—often another name for boring—she was far more than merely shrewd. But her mentality seemed to him hard as bronze. And as bronze reflects the light, her mentality seemed to reflect all the cold lights in her nature. But he forgot the stagnant town, the bald-headed man at the club window, the organ and "The Manola." Despite her generalizing on men, with its unexpressed avowal of her deep-seated belief in physical weapons, she had chosen aright in her armoury. His brain had to acknowledge it. There again was the link between them. When at last he got up to go, she said:
"I suppose you will soon be leaving London?"
"I expect to get away on the fifteenth. Are you staying on?"
"I dare say I shall. You wonder what I do here?"
"Yes."
"I am out a great deal on my balcony. When you came I was there."
She made a movement towards it.
"Would you like to see my view?"
"Thank you."
As he followed her through the window space, he was suddenly very conscious of the physical charm that clung about her. All her movements were expressive, seemed very specially hers. They were like an integral part of a character—her character. They had almost the individuality of an expression in the eyes. And in her character, in her individuality, mingled with much he hated was there not something that charmed? He asked himself the question as he stood near her on the balcony. And now, escaped from her room, even at this height there came upon him again the hot sluggishness of London. The sun was shining brightly, the air was warm and still, the view was large and unimpeded; but he felt a strange, almost tropical dreariness that seemed to him more dreadful than any dreariness of winter.
"Do you spend much of your time here?" he said.
"A great deal. I sit here and read a book. You don't like it?"
She turned her bright eyes, with their dilated pupils, slowly away from his, and looked down over the river.
"I do. But there's a frightful dreariness in London on such a day as this. Surely you feel it?"
"No. I don't feel such things this summer."
In saying the words her voice had altered. There was a note of triumph in it. Or so Isaacson thought. And that warmth, as of hope, in her had surely strengthened, altering her whole appearance.
"One has one's inner resources," she added, quietly, but with a thrill in her voice.
She turned to him again. Her tall figure—she was taller than he by at least three inches—was beautiful in its commanding, yet not vulgar, self-possession. Her thin and narrow hands held the balcony railing rather tightly. Her long neck took a delicate curve when she turned her head towards him. And nothing that time had left of beauty to her escaped his eyes. He had eyes that were very just.
"Did you think I had none?"
Suddenly he resolved to speak to her more plainly. Till this moment she had kept their conversation at a certain level of pretence. But now her eyes defied him, and he replied to their defiance.
"Do you forget how much I know of you?" he said.
"Do you mean—of the rumours about me?"
"I mean what you told me of yourself."
"When was that? Oh, do you mean in your consulting room? And you believe all a woman tells you?"
She smiled at him satirically.
"I believe what you told me that day in my consulting-room, as thoroughly as I disbelieve what you told me, and Mr. Armine, the night we met you at supper."
"And what are your grounds for your belief and disbelief?"
"Suppose I said my instinct?"
"I should answer, by all means trust it, if you like. Only do not expect every one to trust it, too."
Her last words sounded almost like a half-laughing menace.
"Why should I want others to trust it?" he asked, quietly.
"I leave your instinct to tell you that, my dear Doctor," she answered gently, with a smile.
"Well," he said, "I must say good-bye. I must leave you to your inner resources. You haven't told me what they are."
"Can't you imagine?"
"Spiritual, I suppose!"
"You've guessed it—clever man!"
"And your gospel of Materialism, which you preached to me so powerfully, gambling, yachting, racing, motoring, theatre-going, eating and drinking, in the 'for to-morrow we die' mood: those pleasures of the typical worldly life of to-day which you said you delighted in? You have replaced them all satisfactorily with 'inner resources'?"
"With inner resources."
Her smiling eyes did not shrink from his. He thought they looked hard as two blue and shining jewels under their painted brows.
"Good-bye—and come again."
While Isaacson walked slowly down the corridor, Mrs. Chepstow opened her writing-table drawer, and took from it a packet of letters which she had put there when the servant first knocked to announce the visitor.
The letters were all from Nigel.
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