TARTLED by his word of annoyance, Madelon Wroxeter leaned to one side, the better to observe her husband across the narrow circle of damask where the trio sat at dinner. A scarlet lamp beamed dully over the table, and in its light Mrs. Wroxeter's attitude revealed a curving line of perfect beauty between her neck and shoulders. Ellis Drake thought he had been surfeited by the girl's perfections, but he noted the line with shameless eagerness.
"What in the world has happened, David?" said she.
"A sharp corner in the rim of the claret glass, dear." Wroxeter pressed a serviette to his mouth. "I nicked my clumsy lip. You have allowed our tableware to suffer during my absence from civilization. 'He who leaves his home unlocked will find his wine running, his dishes broke, his women—' It is an Arabian proverb of great wisdom. I sha'n't finish it."
Drake laughed, readily, but Mrs. Wroxeter's eyebrows drew together in a charming frown.
"Hélas! ever your Arabians!" she sighed, in her pretty French-English.
"Jealousy, you see, David," commented Drake, smiling.
Wroxeter nodded, and adjusted his spectacles. Newspaper artists found the famous explorer a poor subject. He was a slight, dark man, with a sparse and grizzled beard. Only at the third or fourth glance might one catch the wiry energy in his grave face.
"Anything so unpleasant as jealousy is out of place here, Madelon," he said, sententiously. "Is it not the night of my home-coming to New York, and to my beautiful young wife, and to my trusted friend? That is an occasion, I fancy. I pledge you." He raised his glass, but set it down untasted. "My lip smarts like fire. In Turkestan, one might be poisoned so."
Drake was courteously interested.
"Oh, a cup with a barb to prick your tongue is a familiar trick," went on Wroxeter. "The blue thorn of Kashgar would have done my business here, swiftly and certainly. In a minute, I'd be twisted and burning on the carpet. I saw a man die of the blue thorn at Fort Yaryn. When he was dead, he was like a black, swollen hoop; he"
"David!" Mrs. Wroxeter shuddered, appealingly.
"No, it is not a nice anecdote," he admitted. "Quebec pleased you last Autumn, did it not, Ellis? Madelon tells me that you were there while she was revisiting madame, her mother. Now, the tobacco, Mifflin."
Cigars were offered by the old butler, gray in his master's service, and over the boxes Drake hesitated silently before replying. To his relief, however, Mrs. Wroxeter took up the conversation.
Drake leaned back in his chair, amused at her ingenuousness. Apparently, she was as naïve as if she were ignorant of the passion in the heart of her husband's friend, as if Drake had not sent her that mad letter a few days since, in which his love had broken the bonds of his calculating discretion for the first and only time. His note was in no way acknowledged, neither was it reproved. To-night, her manner convinced Drake that he must win.
"Let us go to the library," said Wroxeter, rising.
"But surely an intruder—at this reunion—" protested Drake.
"Not a bit of it!" Wroxeter slipped one brown hand within Drake's elbow, and laid the other on his wife's exquisite shoulder. "The library, by all means."
The room had once been a studio; two years ago, it was full of left-over artists' trappery when Wroxeter brought to the house the wife whom he had taken, in his middle-age, from the Canadian convent school. Here, among the pictures, Drake had met her—herself, he thought, the very picture of a growing flower.
Wroxeter turned out the gay canvases, and made the cavernous apartment as somber as a vault. Dusky tapestries shrouded the walls, and throttled the windows. Among them peered the mounted heads of monstrous beasts; a hideous idol brooded malevolently in one corner; in another grinned the effigy of an ancient Chinese executioner in his red-and-yellow armor. Ranged above the low book-cases, gleamed the celebrated Wroxeter fighting knives. The collection was reputed priceless—poniard, creese and yataghan, assagai and dirk, bowie, claymore and machete. The single green-shaded lamp glimmered on an enormous table, littered with charts and documents. In front of the blinking coals in the grate, a divan was covered with lustrous bearskin. Drake sat beside Madelon; Wroxeter leaned idly against the repulsive figurehead of an African war-canoe, flanking the fireplace.
To Drake, the sight of the girl's tender beauty in this room was always a fantasy of the incongruous. And typical of her incongruous marriage? The comparison occurred to Drake's mind as he bent forward and warmed his hands thoughtfully over Wroxeter's hearthstone.