The Streets of Ascalon

"Rather extraordinary thing, that! I was giving a most respectable card party – some ladies and gentlemen of sorts – from the Winter Garden I believe – and one of the ladies inadvertently shyed a glass at another lady – "

"For Heaven's sake, Dankmere – "

"Quite right old chap – my fault entirely – I won't do it again. But, do you know, the gallery already has become a most popular resort. People are coming and going all day – a lot of dealers among them I suspect – and there have been a number of theatrical people who want to hire pictures for certain productions to be staged next winter – "

"We don't do that sort of thing!"

"That's what I thought; but there was one very fetching girl who opens in 'Ancestors' next October – "

"No, no, no!"

"Right-o! I'll tell her at luncheon… I say, Quarren: Karl Westguard wants the gallery to-night. May I let him have it?"

"Certainly. What for?"

"Oh, some idea of his – I've forgotten what he said."

"I believe I'd better come down," said Quarren bluntly.

"Don't dream of it, old fellow. Everything is doing nicely. My respects to the fair. By-the-bye – anything in my line up there?"

Quarren laughed:

"I'm afraid not, Dankmere."

"Very well," said the Earl, airily. "I'm not worrying now, you know. Good-bye, old sport!"

And he rang off.

Quarren meeting Molly in the hall said:

"I think I'd better leave this afternoon. Dankmere is messing matters."

"Are you going to run away?" she said in a low voice, glancing sideways at Strelsa who had just passed them wearing her riding habit.

"Run away," he repeated, also lowering his voice. "From whom?"

"From Langly Sprowl."

He shrugged and looked out of the window.

"It is running away," insisted his pretty hostess. "You have a chance I think."

"Not the slightest."

"You are wrong. Strelsa wept in her sleep all night. How does that strike you?"

"Not over me," he said grimly; but added: "How do you know she did?"

"Her maid told mine," admitted Molly shamelessly. "Now if you are going to criticise my channels of information I'll remind you that Richelieu himself – "

"Oh, Molly! Molly! What a funny girl you are!" he said, laughing. "You're a sweet, loyal little thing, too – but there's no use – " His face became expressionless, almost haggard – "there's no use," he repeated under his breath.

Slowly, side by side, they walked out to the veranda, her hand resting lightly just within the crook of his arm, he, absent-mindedly filling his pipe.

"Strelsa likes you," she said.

"With all the ardour and devotion of a fish," he returned, coolly.

"Rix?"

"What?"

"Do you know," said Molly, thoughtfully, "she is a sort of a fish. She has the emotions of a mollusc as far as your sex is concerned. Some women are that way – more women than men would care to believe… Do you know, Ricky, if you'll let us alone, it is quite natural for us to remain indifferent to considerations of that sort?"

She stood watching the young fellow busy with his pipe.

"It's only when you keep at us long enough that we respond," she said. "Some of us are quickly responsive; it takes many of us a long while to catch fire. Threatened emotion instinctively repels many of us – the more fastidious among us, the finer grained and more delicately nerved, are essentially reserved. Modesty, pride, a natural aloofness, are as much a part of many women as their noses and fingers – "

"What becomes of modesty and pride when a girl marries for money?" he asked coolly.

"Some women can give and accept in cold blood what it would be impossible for them to accord to a more intimate and emotional demand."

"No doubt an ethical distinction," he said, "but not very clear to me."

"I did not argue that such women are admirable or excusable… But how many modern marriages in our particular vicinity are marriages of inclination, Ricky?"

"You're a washed-out lot," he said – "you're satiated as schoolgirls. If you have any emotions left they're twisted ones by the time you are introduced. Most débutantes of your sort make their bow equipped for business, and with the experience of what, practically, has amounted to several seasons.

"If any old-fashioned young girls remain in your orbit I don't know where to find them. Why, do you suppose any young girl, not yet out, would bother to go to a party of any sort where there was not champagne and a theatre-box and a supper in prospect? That's a fine comment on your children, Molly, but you know it's true and so does everybody who pretends to know anything about it."

"You talk like Karl Westguard," she said, laughing. "Anyway, what has all this to do with you and Strelsa Leeds?"

"Nothing." He shrugged. "She is part of your last word in social civilisation – "

"She is a very normal, sensitive, proud girl, who has known little except unhappiness all her life, Rix – including two years of marital misery – two years of horror. – And you forget that those two years were the result of a demand purely and brutally emotional – to which, a novice, utterly ignorant, she yielded – pushed on by her mother… Please be fair to her; remember that her childhood was pinched with poverty, that her girlhood in school was a lonely one, embarrassed by lack of everything which her fashionable schoolmates had as matters of course.

"She could not go to the homes of her schoolmates in vacation times, because she could not ask them, in turn, to her own. She was still in school when Reggie Leeds saw her – and misbehaved – and the poor little thing was sent home, guiltless but already half-damned. No wonder her mother chased Reggie Leeds half around the world dragging her daughter by the wrist!"

"Did it make matters any better to force that drunken cad into a marriage?" asked Quarren coldly.

"It makes another marriage possible for Strelsa."

Quarren gazed out across the country where a fine misty rain was still falling. Acres of clover stretched away silvered with powdery moisture; robins and bluebirds covered the soaked lawns, and their excited call-notes prophesied blue skies.

"It doesn't make any difference one way or the other," said Quarren, half to himself. "She will go on in the predestined orbit – "

"Not if a stronger body pulls her out of it."