How He Lied to Her Husband | Page 6

Society, and not any
individual, is the villain of the piece; but it does not follow that the
people who take offence at it are all champions of society. Their

credentials cannot be too carefully examined.

HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND
It is eight o'clock in the evening. The curtains are drawn and the lamps
lighted in the drawing room of Her flat in Cromwell Road. Her lover, a
beautiful youth of eighteen, in evening dress and cape, with a bunch of
flowers and an opera hat in his hands, comes in alone. The door is near
the corner; and as he appears in the doorway, he has the fireplace on the
nearest wall to his right, and the grand piano along the opposite wall to
his left. Near the fireplace a small ornamental table has on it a hand
mirror, a fan, a pair of long white gloves, and a little white woollen
cloud to wrap a woman's head in. On the other side of the room, near
the piano, is a broad, square, softly up- holstered stool. The room is
furnished in the most approved South Kensington fashion: that is, it is
as like a show room as possible, and is intended to demonstrate the
racial position and spending powers of its owners, and not in the least
to make them comfortable.
He is, be it repeated, a very beautiful youth, moving as in a dream,
walking as on air. He puts his flowers down carefully on the table
beside the fan; takes off his cape, and, as there is no room on the table
for it, takes it to the piano; puts his hat on the cape; crosses to the
hearth; looks at his watch; puts it up again; notices the things on the
table; lights up as if he saw heaven opening before him; goes to the
table and takes the cloud in both hands, nestling his nose into its
softness and kissing it; kisses the gloves one after another; kisses the
fan: gasps a long shuddering sigh of ecstasy; sits down on the stool and
presses his hands to his eyes to shut out reality and dream a little; takes
his hands down and shakes his head with a little smile of rebuke for his
folly; catches sight of a speck of dust on his shoes and hastily and
carefully brushes it off with his handkerchief; rises and takes the hand
mirror from the table to make sure of his tie with the gravest anxiety;
and is looking at his watch again when She comes in, much flustered.
As she is dressed for the theatre; has spoilt, petted ways; and wears
many diamonds, she has an air of being a young and beautiful woman;
but as a matter of hard fact, she is, dress and pretensions apart, a very
ordinary South Kensington female of about 37, hopelessly inferior in
physical and spiritual distinction to the beautiful youth, who hastily

puts down the mirror as she enters.
HE [kissing her hand] At last!
SHE. Henry: something dreadful has happened.
HE. What's the matter?
SHE. I have lost your poems.
HE. They were unworthy of you. I will write you some more.
SHE. No, thank you. Never any more poems for me. Oh, how could I
have been so mad! so rash! so imprudent!
HE. Thank Heaven for your madness, your rashness, your imprudence!
SHE [impatiently] Oh, be sensible, Henry. Can't you see what a terrible
thing this is for me? Suppose anybody finds these poems! what will
they think?
HE. They will think that a man once loved a woman more devotedly
than ever man loved woman before. But they will not know what man
it was.
SHE. What good is that to me if everybody will know what woman it
was?
HE. But how will they know?
SHE. How will they know! Why, my name is all over them: my silly,
unhappy name. Oh, if I had only been christened Mary Jane, or Gladys
Muriel, or Beatrice, or Francesca, or Guinevere, or something quite
common! But Aurora! Aurora! I'm the only Aurora in London; and
everybody knows it. I believe I'm the only Aurora in the world. And it's
so horribly easy to rhyme to it! Oh, Henry, why didn't you try to
restrain your feelings a little in common consideration for me? Why
didn't you write with some little reserve?
HE. Write poems to you with reserve! You ask me that!
SHE [with perfunctory tenderness] Yes, dear, of course it was very nice
of you; and I know it was my own fault as much as yours. I ought to
have noticed that your verses ought never to have been addressed to a
married woman.
HE. Ah, how I wish they had been addressed