The Mischief Maker | Page 9

be the first woman who has ever crossed its threshold."
"That," she remarked, "rather interests me. Still, it is only what I should have expected. No, I do not think that I will sit down. I am trying to ask myself exactly why I have come."
"If you can answer that question," Julien said grimly, "you will appease a very natural curiosity on my part. It is not like you."
"Quite true," she assented. "It is not like me. I have run a great risk in coming here and it is not my m��tier to run risks. And now that I am here I do not know why I have come. This has been an impulse and this is an hour outside my life. I am trying to understand it. Come here, Julien." He came unwillingly to her side. She held out her hand, but he shook his head.
"Mabel," he said, "you and I do not need to mince words. To-night I am celebrating the ruin of my career. I am leaving England within a few hours. I have you to thank for what has happened. Yet you come to me, you hold out your hand. You must forgive me--I am afraid I am dull."
"No," she replied, "you are not dull. Your feelings towards me are obvious and very natural. Mine towards you I am not so sure of. It is not because I did not understand you that I came here to-night. It is because I did not understand myself. May I go on?"
"Why not?" he answered. "I am at your service."
"From the days of my boarding-school," she continued, "I have known only one Mabel. In her girlhood she had all that she could get out of life and turned everything she could to her own ends. A marriage was arranged for her--you see, I was half a Jewess and my husband was half a Jew, and things are done like that with us. The marriage opened the door to a fresh set of ambitions. For the last few years I have trodden a well-worn path. It was I who advised my husband to refuse a baronetcy. It was I who won his first election. I see that my photographs are in all the illustrated papers, that his speeches are properly recorded, that my visiting list moves within the correct limits. These things have spelt life. To the fulfillment of my husband's ambitions there was one obstacle. That obstacle was you. In life one schemes. It was my husband's wish that I should make myself agreeable to you, even to the extent of a flirtation."
She raised her eyes.
"Your obedience to your husband is most touching," he said.
"It is true, I suppose," she went on, "that we have flirted. I looked upon it as the means to an end. The end came. I played my cards quite ruthlessly, I gathered in the reward. I got your letter, I handed it to my husband. Your career was finished, my husband's begun."
"This is most interesting," Julien muttered.
"Is it?" she answered. "I suppose it should have been an hour of triumph with me. It simply isn't. I have come to a place in my life which I don't understand. When I told myself that it was over, that I had flirted with you, that I had won your friendship and your confidence, betrayed you, ruined you for a peerage and that my husband should take office, I should surely have been satisfied! It was for that I had worked. I gave my husband the letter and I watched him walk off in triumph. Since then I have not been myself. I have come to you, Julien, to ask if there is no other end possible to this?"
Once more she raised her eyes. Julien came a step nearer to her. They were standing now face to face.
"All of a sudden," she murmured, "I looked back and I saw the way I have lived and the way I am living and the life that spreads itself out before me. I saw myself a peeress, I saw myself receiving my husband's guests, I saw the gratification of all those ambitions which have seemed to me so wonderful. And I locked the door and I shrieked and it seemed to me that there was a new thing and a new thought in my life. I have done you a hideous wrong, Julien. There is only one way I can set it right. There is only one moment in which it can be done, and that moment is now. Tomorrow I shall be back again. For this one hour I see the truth. I am a very rich woman, Julien. My husband's future, indeed, is largely bound up with my wealth. Remember that in all I have done I have been