CONFIDENCE
had really been wishing Bernard out of his house he had behaved with admirable self-control. Bernard, however, followed this train of thought a very short distance. It was odious to him to believe that he could have appeared to Gordon, however guiltlessly, to have overstepped even in imagination the mystic line which includes the husband and excludes every one else; not to say that, moreover, if one came to that, he really cared about as much for poor little Blanche as for the weather-cock on the nearest steeple. He simply hurried his preparations for departure, and he told Blanche that he should have to bid her farewell on the following day. He had found her in the drawing-room, waiting for dinner. She was expecting company to dine, and Gordon had not yet come down.
She was sitting in the vague glow of the fire-light, in a wonderful blue dress, with two little blue feet crossed on the rug and pointed at the hearth. She received Bernard's announcement with small satisfaction, and expended a great deal of familiar ridicule on his project of a journey to California. Then, suddenly getting up and looking at him a moment—
"I know why you are going," she said.
"I am glad to hear my explanations have not been lost."
"Your explanations are all nonsense. You are going for another reason."
"Well," said Bernard, "if you insist upon it, it's because you are too sharp with me."
"It's because of me. So much as that is true." Bernard wondered what she was going to say—if she were going to be silly enough to allude to the most impudent of scandals; then, as she stood opening and closing her blue fan and smiling at him in the fire-light, he felt that she was silly enough for any-
145
