“But what about Trent?” Rendell asked. “How did he see it?”
Rosalie hesitated, then said slowly:
“He—well—he thought it was inevitable, and he made me feel it was. He’s a very powerful personality, you know that. No, of course, you don’t know that! Well, he is. He controlled me completely. If, when I was alone, a sudden fit of terror or remorse seized me, I telephoned him—or went to him—and he made me calm again.”
Rendell said nothing. The knowledge that Vera had also visited Trent during the first year of his liaison with Rosalie—and that he had treated her very differently—made Rendell feel that he was becoming Trent’s accomplice.
But, fortunately, Rosalie seemed to have forgotten him. She had sunk into a chair and was now gazing in front of her, seeing the memories she had evoked.
“How long were you lovers?” Rendell asked at last.
“Three years. He had just finished a book when I met him. Listen! Only a few days ago, he suddenly said he was going abroad to work again. I begged him not to go, but it was useless. He seemed not to listen. I was terrified of being left alone with our secret. I knew I’d become hysterical and tell Paul. But, almost immediately, Paul became ill. He got worse and worse. Then, on that Monday night, I saw that paragraph in the paper.”
She made a movement with her hands as if thrusting aside something she feared to face.
“If I had not met you, when I came to Potiphar Street, I should have gone mad. Do you know that? Ivor was delirious!, I was certain he would betray our secret to strangers. I was afraid of blackmail. I was afraid of everything. My God, that Monday night! I never dreamed that Paul was going to die. I thought he would discover everything. Ah, you don’t know what I went through that night!”
“I’d like to ask you one question,” Rendell said, after a silence, “though I suppose it’s an odd one.”
“Ask me anything. You know everything now.”
“When Trent is better, would you marry him—say, in a year?”
“No—not now. I thought I was everything to him, but I found I wasn’t.”
“Because he wouldn’t give up going away when you asked him?”
“Yes.” Then, suddenly: “Do you despise me?”
“No.”
“Not even if I tell you I am glad Paul is dead?”
“No. We all go through hell, sooner or later, and—afterwards—we don’t feel like judging others.”
She did not reply. Rendell glanced at her. She was lying back with closed eyes, looking like a child asleep in the firelight. He did not know which disturbed him more deeply—her pathos or her beauty.
“I’d better go,” he said gently. “You’re tired.”
“No, no! Please don’t go. You—you must have some sherry. I’ll get it.”
“No, really!” Rendell exclaimed. “I don’t want any. You are exhausted and need a rest, and so I’d better go.”
They had both risen. Suddenly she put her hand on his arm.
“Stay here and dine with me. I shall be alone otherwise. And I’m afraid of being alone. I’ve a maid with me—but she’s out to-night. Do stay. Please stay.”
The appeal in her eyes embarrassed Rendell, and he looked away.
“Very well, but——”
“You will! You’ll dine with me! And you’ll tell me about yourself. And why you are in that horrible house. And—and everything!”
“Yes, on one——”
“Ah, you are kind! I was afraid of to-night—afraid of sitting alone by that fire, hearing voices and seeing things! But now I shall be all right. Then, perhaps, I shall sleep to-night.”
“I’m staying on one condition,” Rendell announced firmly, “and that is that you have a rest now. I’m going to pull that sofa nearer the fire and you’re going to have an hour’s sleep.”
“Very well. And you’ll sit there and smoke. Wait!”
She ran into the bedroom, returning almost immediately with an eiderdown.
“Look!”
“Good! Now, down you go!”
She obeyed him and he covered her with the eiderdown.
“Now go to sleep at once. Not another word!”
“What a nice person you are!”
“To sleep at once,” Rendell repeated, switching off the lights.
He sat down in an arm-chair with an air of finality.
Ten minutes later the sound of regular breathing haunted the room.
VI
Rendell’s visit to Rosalie created an intimacy which transformed his days so swiftly that the process was effected before he was aware of it.
During the next month they met almost daily, and most of these meetings were of long duration. Frequently they would spend the whole day together, the result being that he obtained a deeper knowledge of her than a greater number of briefer meetings, over a longer period, would have afforded.
Soon he half believed that several different women inhabited her body in turn—one yielding possession to the next with bewildering rapidity.
The range of her emotions; the lightning transitions from mood to mood; her sudden exaltation; her swift relapse to inertia, all fostered the belief that although, physically, she was one woman—psychically, she was a dozen.
He would leave her, apparently tranquil as a child, intent on some problem relating to clothes. He would return and discover an hysterical being, lashed by memories and fears. As any attempt at consolation precipitated a new crisis, he learned to say nothing—and to wait. And he learned this from her maid, whose devotion to Rosalie beggared every example of loyalty known to Rendell. She loved and served her with the self-immolation of a saint.
“How on earth do you stand this!” Rendell exclaimed on one occasion when his patience had collapsed.
“She makes you forget it all with a word or a look,” the girl replied, with the conviction of experience.
Again and again, Rendell had reason to remember Wrayburn’s statement that Rosalie was a “psychic invalid,” but as this diagnosis ignored her fascination, it gradually lost its significance. She quickened Rendell’s imagination, thereby making the world more beautiful and more mysterious. He began to feel life as she felt it. And he learned that although she had no mental consistency, she possessed an emotional logic which revealed itself only to sympathy. He began to respect this, although her actions often dismayed or embarrassed him.
Impulse ruled her. Lacking it, she lapsed into inertia. Prompted by it, she would act instantly and with a total disregard of the conventions. At its bidding, she would rise and leave a restaurant, speak to a stranger, or do some deed which demanded considerable moral courage. Her sensibility to atmosphere—her penetration into the characters of people, with no data other than their appearance—fascinated and bewildered Rendell till he could not decide whether he had been blind before meeting her, or whether he, too, was becoming a psychic invalid as a result of her influence.
Her demands, therefore, were many and varied, but he yielded to all of them. She was experiencing freedom for the first time and was determined to indulge its privileges. This determination expressed itself in a number of ways, one being that she wanted to explore a London she had only glimpsed from the security of Vivian’s car. She had known only the thoroughfares, she now made Rendell take her into the by-ways. It was her reaction to her husband’s orthodoxy. The sheltered life had been a cage—a warm, spacious, luxurious one—but a cage none the less. Also, this penetration into an unknown London set a gap between her and her memories. It created the illusion that a long period of time separated her from them. As nothing recalled the past, it receded.