"He's not in love with you," assented Palmer."He doesn't want you that way.There's some woman somewhere, I've heard--and he doesn't care about anybody but her."He was speaking in a careless, casual way, watching her out of the corner of his eye.And she, taken off guard, betrayed in her features the secret that was a secret even from herself.
He sprang up with a bound, sprang at her, caught her up out of her chair, the fingers of one hand clasping her throat.
"I thought so!" he hissed."You love him--damn you! You love him! You'd better look out, both of you!"There came a knock at the door between her bedroom and that of Madame Clelie.Palmer released her, stood panting, with furious eyes on the door from which the sound had come.Susan called, "It's all right, Clelie, for the present." Then she said to Palmer, "I told Clelie to knock if she ever heard voices in this room--or any sound she didn't understand." She reseated herself, began to massage her throat where his fingers had clutched it."It's fortunate my skin doesn't mar easily," she went on."What were you saying?""I know the truth now.You love Brent.That's the milk in the cocoanut."She reflected on this, apparently with perfect tranquillity, apparently with no memory of his furious threat against her and against Brent.She said:
"Perhaps I was simply piqued because there's another woman.""You are jealous."
"I guess I was--a little."
"You admit that you love him, you----"
He checked himself on the first hissing breath of the foul epithet.She said tranquilly:
"Jealousy doesn't mean love.We're jealous in all sorts of ways--and of all sorts of things.""Well--_he_ cares nothing about _you_."
"Nothing."
"And never will.He'd despise a woman who had been----""Don't hesitate.Say it.I'm used to hearing it, Freddie--and to being it.And not `had been' but `is.' Istill am, you know."
"You're not!" he cried."And never were--and never could be--for some unknown reason, God knows why."She shrugged her shoulders, lit another cigarette.He went on:
"You can't get it out of your head that because he's interested in you he's more or less stuck on you.That's the way with women.The truth is, he wants you merely to act in his plays.""And I want that, too."
"You think I'm going to stand quietly by and let this thing go on--do you?"She showed not the faintest sign of nervousness at this repetition, more carefully veiled, of his threat against her--and against Brent.She chose the only hopeful course;she went at him boldly and directly.Said she with amused carelessness:
"Why not? He doesn't want me.Even if I love him, I'm not giving him anything you want.""How do you know what I want?" cried he, confused by this unexpected way of meeting his attack."You think I'm simply a brute--with no fine instincts or feelings----"She interrupted him with a laugh."Don't be absurd, Freddie,"said she."You know perfectly well you and I don't call out the finer feelings in each other.If either of us wanted that sort of thing, we'd have to look elsewhere.""You mean Brent--eh?"
She laughed with convincing derision."What nonsense!" She put her arms round his neck, and her lips close to his.The violet-gray eyes were half closed, the perfume of the smooth amber-white skin, of the thick, wavy, dark hair, was in his nostrils.And in a languorous murmur she soothed his subjection to a deep sleep with, "As long as you give me what I want from you, and I give you what you want from me why should we wrangle?"And with a smile he acquiesced.She felt that she had ended the frightful danger--to Brent rather than to herself--that suddenly threatened from those wicked eyes of Palmer's.But it might easily come again.She did not dare relax her efforts, for in the succeeding days she saw that he was like one annoyed by a constant pricking from a pin hidden in the clothing and searched for in vain.He was no longer jealous of Brent.But while he didn't know what was troubling him, he did know that he was uncomfortable.
