The Splendid Folly Part 39

Only she--the wife!--had been kept in the dark. Probably he had spent the entire evening behind the scenes. . . . In her overwrought condition, no supposition was too wild for credence.

Vaguely she heard some one at the back of the house shout "Speech!" and the cry was taken up by a dozen voices, but Max only laughed and shook his head, and once more the heavy curtains fell together, shutting him and Adrienne from her sight.

Mechanically Diana gathered up her wraps and prepared to leave the box.

"Aren't you coming round behind to congratulate them, Mrs. Errington?"

Jerry's astonished tones broke on her ears as she turned down the corridor in the direction of the vestibule.

"No," she replied quietly. "I'm going home."

"You told me you wouldn't come to the theatre--and you intended going all the time!"

Diana's wraps were flung on the chair beside her, and she stood, a slim, pliant figure in her white evening gown, defiantly facing her husband.

"No, I'd no intention of going. I detest first nights," he answered.

"Then why were you there? Oh, I don't believe it--I don't believe it!

You simply wanted to spend the evening with Adrienne; that was why you refused to go with me."

"Diana!" Max spoke incredulously. "You can't believe--you can't think that!"

"But I do think that!"--imperiously. "What else can I think?" Her long-pent jealousy had broken forth at last, and the words raced from her lips. "You refused to come when I asked you--offered me Jerry as an escort instead. Jerry!"--scornfully--"I'm to be content with my husband's secretary, I suppose, so that my husband himself can dance attendance on Adrienne de Gervais?"

Max stood motionless, his eyes like steel.

"You are being--rather childish," he said at last, with slow deliberation. His cool, contemptuous tones cut like a whip.

She had been rapidly losing her self-command, and, reading the intense anger beneath his outward calm, she made an effort to pull herself together.

"Childish?" she retorted. "Yes, I suppose it is childish to mind being deceived. I ought to have been prepared for it--expected it."

At the note of suffering in her voice the anger died swiftly out of his eyes.

"You don't mean that, Diana," he said, more gently.

"Yes, I do. You warned me--didn't you?--that there would be things you couldn't explain. I suppose"--bitterly--"this is one of them!"

"No, it is not. I can explain this. I didn't intend coming to-night, as I told you. But Miss de Gervais rang up from the theatre and begged me to come, so, of course, as she wished it--"

"'As she wished it!' Are her wishes, then, of so much more importance than mine?"

Errington was silent for a moment. At last he replied quietly:--

"You know they are not. But in this case, in the matter of the play, she is ent.i.tled to every consideration."

Diana's eyes searched his face. Beneath the soft laces of her gown her breast still rose and fell stormily, but she had herself in hand now.

"Max, when I married you I took . . . something . . . on trust." She spoke slowly, weighing her words, "But I didn't expect that something to include--Adrienne! What has she to do with you?"

Errington's brows came sharply together. He drew a quick, short breath as though bracing himself to meet some unforeseen danger.

"I've written a play for her," he answered shortly.

"Yes, I know. But is that all that there is between you--this play?"

"I can't answer that question," he replied quietly.

Diana flung out her hand with a sudden, pa.s.sionate gesture.

"You've answered it, I think," she said scornfully.

He took a quick stride towards her, catching her by the arms.

"Diana"--his voice vibrated--"won't you trust me?"

"Trust you! How can I?" she broke out wildly. "If trusting you means standing by whilst Adrienne-- Oh, I can't bear it. You're asking too much of me, Max. I didn't know . . . when you asked me to trust you . . . that it meant--_this_! . . . And there's something else, too. Who are you? What is your real name? I don't even know"--bitterly--"whom I've married!"

He released her suddenly, almost as though she had struck him.

"Who has been talking to you?" he demanded, thickly.

"_Then it's true_?"

Diana's hands fell to her sides and every drop of colour drained away from her face. The question had been lying dormant in her mind ever since the day when Olga Lermontof had first implanted it there. Now it had sprung from her lips, dragged forth by the emotion of the moment.

_And he couldn't answer it_!

"Then it's true?" she repeated.

Errington's face set like a mask.

"That is a question you shouldn't have asked," he replied coldly.

"And one you cannot answer?"

He bent his head.

"And one I cannot answer."

Very slowly she picked up her wraps.

"Thank you," she said unsteadily. "I'll--I'll go now."

He laid his hand deliberately on the door-handle.

"No," he said. "No, you won't go. I've heard what you have to say; now you'll listen to me. Good G.o.d, Diana!" he continued pa.s.sionately.

"Do you think I'm going to stand quietly by and see our happiness wrecked?"