And suddenly Bianca understood. This was the meaning of the packed trunk, the dismantled room. He was going to take her, after all!
In the turmoil of this discovery two words alone escaped her:
"I see!"
They were enough. The girl's face at once lost all trace of its look of desperate calculation, brightened, became guilty, and from guilty sullen.
The antagonism of all the long past months was now declared between these two--Bianca's pride could no longer conceal, the girl's submissiveness no longer obscure it. They stood like duellists, one on each side of the trunk--that common, brown-Japanned, tin trunk, corded with rope. Bianca looked at it.
"You," she said, "and he? Ha, ha; ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!"Against that cruel laughter--more poignant than a hundred homilies on caste, a thousand scornful words--the little model literally could not stand; she sat down in the low chair where she had evidently been sitting to watch the street. But as a taste of blood will infuriate a hound, so her own laughter seemed to bereave Bianca of all restraint.
"What do you imagine he's taking you for, girl? Only out of pity!
It's not exactly the emotion to live on in exile. In exile--but that you do not understand!"The little model staggered to her feet again. Her face had grown painfully red.
"He wants me!" she said.
"Wants you? As he wants his dinner. And when he's eaten it--what then? No, of course he'll never abandon you; his conscience is too tender. But you'll be round his neck--like this!" Bianca raised her arms, looped, and dragged them slowly down, as a mermaid's arms drag at a drowning sailor.
The little model stammered: "I'll do what he tells me! I'll do what he tells me!"Bianca stood silent, looking at the girl, whose heaving breast and little peacock's feather, whose small round hands twisting in front of her, and scent about her clothes, all seemed an offence.
"And do you suppose that he'll tell you what he wants? Do you imagine he'll have the necessary brutality to get rid of you? He'll think himself bound to keep you till you leave him, as I suppose you will some day!"The girl dropped her hands. "I'll never leave him--never!" she cried out passionately.
"Then Heaven help him!" said Bianca.
The little model's eyes seemed to lose all pupil, like two chicory flowers that have no dark centres. Through them, all that she was feeling struggled to find an outlet; but, too deep for words, those feelings would not pass her lips, utterly unused to express emotion.
She could only stammer:
"I'm not--I'm not--I will---" and press her hands again to her breast.
Bianca's lip curled.
"I see; you imagine yourself capable of sacrifice. Well, you have your chance. Take it!" She pointed to the corded trunk. "Now's your time; you have only to disappear!"The little model shrank back against the windowsill. "He wants me!"she muttered. "I know he wants me."
Bianca bit her lips till the blood came.
"Your idea of sacrifice," she said, "is perfect! If you went now, in a month's time he'd never think of you again."The girl gulped. There was something so pitiful in the movements of her hands that Bianca turned away. She stood for several seconds staring at the door, then, turning round again, said:
"Well?"
But the girl's whole face had changed. All tear-stained, indeed, she had already masked it with a sort of immovable stolidity.
Bianca went swiftly up to the trunk.
"You shall!" she said. "Take that thing and go."The little model did not move.
"So you won't?"
The girl trembled violently all over. She moistened her lips, tried to speak, failed, again moistened them, and this time murmured; "I'll only--I'll only--if lie tells me!""So you still imagine he will tell you!"
The little model merely repeated: "I won't--won't do anything without he tells me!"Bianca laughed. "Why, it's like a dog!" she said.
But the girl had turned abruptly to the window. Her lips were parted. She was shrinking, fluttering, trembling at what she saw.
She was indeed like a spaniel dog who sees her master coming. Bianca had no need of being told that Hilary was outside. She went into the passage and opened the front door.
He was coming up the steps, his face worn like that of a man in fever, and at the sight of his wife he stood quite still, looking into her face.
Without the quiver of an eyelid, without the faintest trace of emotion, or the slightest sign that she knew him to be there, Bianca passed and slowly walked away.
