Cliffe, still a little morose, replied that his invitation had been waiting for him at his London rooms. He gave the information carelessly, as though it did not matter to him a straw. In reality, as soon as, while still in America, he had seen the announcement of the ball in one of the New York papers, he had written at once to the Marchioness who was to give it—an old acquaintance of his—practically demanding an invitation. It had been sent indeed with alacrity, and without waiting for its arrival Cliffe had ordered his dress in Paris. Kitty inquired what it was to be.
"I told my man to copy a portrait of Alva."
"Ah, that's right," said Kitty, nodding,—"that's right. Only it would have been better if it had been Torquemada."
Rather nettled, Cliffe asked what there might be about him that so forcibly suggested the Grand Inquisitor. Kitty, cigarette in hand, with half-shut eyes, did not answer immediately. She seemed to be perusing his face—with difficulty.
"Strength, I suppose—" she said at last, slowly. Cliffe waited, then burst into a laugh.
"And cruelty?"
She nodded.
"Who are my victims?"
She said nothing.
"Whose tales have you been listening to, Lady Kitty?"
She mentioned the name of a French lady. Cliffe changed countenance.
"Ah, well, if you have been talking to her," he said haughtily, "you may well expect to see me appear as Diabolus in person."
"No.—But it's since then—that I've read the poems again. You see, you tell the public so much—"
"That you think you have the right to guess the rest?" He paused, then added with impatience: "Don't guess, Lady Kitty! You have everything that life can give you. Let my secrets alone."
There was silence. Kitty, looking round her, saw that Madeleine Alcot was entertaining her other guests, and that she and Cliffe were unobserved. Suddenly Cliffe bent towards her, and said with roughness, his face struggling to conceal the feeling behind it:
"You heard—and you believed—that I tormented her—that I killed her?"
The anguish in his eyes seemed to strike a certain answering fire from Kitty's.
"Yes,—but—"
"But what?"
"I didn't think it very strange—"
Cliffe watched her closely.
"That a man should be—an inhuman beast—if he were jealous—and desperate? You can sympathize with these things?"
She drew a long breath, and threw away the cigarette she had been holding suspended in her small fingers.
"I don't know anything about them."
"Because"—he hesitated—"your own life has been so happy?"
She evaded him. "Don't you think that jealousy will soon be as dead as—saying your prayers and going to church? I never meet anybody that cares enough—to be jealous."
She spoke first with passionate force, then with contempt, glancing across the room at Madeleine Alcot. Cliffe saw the look, and remembered that Mrs. Alcot's husband, a distinguished Treasury official, had been for years the intimate friend of a very noble and beautiful woman, herself unhappily married. There was no scandal in the matter, though much talk. Mrs. Alcot meanwhile had her own affairs: her husband and she were apparently on friendly terms; only neither ever spoke of the other; and their relations remained a mystery.
Cliffe bent over to Kitty.
"And yet you said you could understand?—such things didn't seem strange to you."
She gave a little reckless laugh.
"Did I? It's like the people who think they could act or sing—if they only had the chance. I choose to think I could feel. And of course I couldn't. We've lost the power. All the old, horrible, splendid things are dead and done with."
"The old passions, you mean?"
"And the old poems! You'll never write like that again!"
"God forbid!" said Cliffe, under his breath. Then as Kitty rose he followed her with his eyes. "Lady Kitty, you've thrown me a challenge that you hardly understand!—Some day I must answer it!"
"Don't answer it," said Kitty, hastily.
