VI. THE COMPACT

THE woman crossed the room and pulled down the blinds. Then she returned to the supper table, having first satisfied herself that the door was closed. Cleave watched her in a hazy kind of way, as if he still doubted the evidence of his senses. He had been practically without food all day and was utterly worn out and exhausted. Moreover, the fumes of the generous wine were still clouding his brain. He had to pinch himself to be sure that the whole thing was not a figment of imagination. He would not have been surprised if the glorious dark vision in the amber dress had taken wings and flown. But there she sat on the other side of the little round table, her dark liquid eyes smiling into his.

“You must not talk yet,” she said. “Let me do the talking. When you have sufficiently recovered your mental balance we shall be able to discuss the plan of campaign.”

“But what does it all mean?” Cleave asked. “Whence all this splendour? When I last saw you you were in a tobacconist’s shop. Mind you, Nell, I always said you would get on, always prophesied that you would do something for yourself in the world, and you have progressed a little farther than I expected. A good marriage, I suppose–”

The woman laughed in a light-hearted fashion. She was looking after Cleave’s creature comforts; he was trying to eat now as if he were accustomed to this kind of thing. He fought against his wolfish appetite.

“There is no husband,” Eleanor Marsh said. “In fact, there never has been. I still retain my own name; sudden changes of that kind would have been awkward sometimes. Behold in me, my dear Jasper, Mrs. Eleanor Marsh, the widow of a deceased Virginian gentleman of good family and fairly good means. That is the role that I have played more or less successfully for the past two years. It is astonishing what a l