He took her hand and forced a smile.
"Betty, I thought you disapproved of this kind of thing. I think,
myself, it's rather imprudent to arrange a meeting through your maid."
Betty jerked away her hand, drew a sharp breath. "What do you mean? I
didn't arrange this meeting. It was you--your man."
They became simultaneously aware of a trap. It had sprung upon them.
With the look of trapped things, they stared at each other, and Betty
instinctively looked back over her shoulder. There stood Jasper in the
doorway of the room. He looked like the most casual of visitors to an
art-gallery, he carried a catalogue in his hand. When he saw that he
was seen he smiled easily and came over to them.
"You will have to forgive me," he murmured pleasantly; "you see, it
was necessary to see you both together and Betty is not willing to
allow me an interview. I am sorry to have chosen a public place and to
have used a trick to get you here, but I could not think of any other
plan. This is really private enough. I have arranged this exhibition
for Foster and it is closed to the public to-day. We got in by special
permit--a fact you probably missed. And, after all, civilized people
ought to be able to talk about anything without excitement."
Betty's eyes glared at him. "I will not stay! This is insufferable!"
But he put out his hand and something in his gesture compelled her.
She sat down on the round, plush seat in the middle of the room and
looked up at the two men helplessly. Joan had once leaned in a
doorway, silent and unconsulted, while two men, her father and Pierre,
settled their property rights in her. Betty was, after all, in no
better case. She listened, whiter and whiter, till at the last she
slowly raised her muff and pressed it against her twisted mouth.
Morena stood with his hand resting on the high back of the circular seat
almost directly above Betty's head. It seemed to hold her there like a
bar. But it was at Prosper he looked, to Prosper he spoke. "My friend,"
he began, and the accentuation of the Hebraic quality of his voice had
an instantaneous effect upon his two listeners. Both Prosper and Betty
knew he was master of some intense agitation. They were conscious of an
increasing rapidity of their pulses. "My friend, I thought that I knew
you fairly well, as one man knows another, but I find that there have
been certain limits to my knowledge. How extraordinary it is! This inner
world of our own lives which we keep closely to ourselves! I have a
friend, yes, a very good friend, a very dear friend,"--the ironic
insistence upon this word gave Prosper the shock of a repeated
blow,--"and I fancy, in the ignorance of my conceit, that this friend's
life is sufficiently open to my understanding. I see him leave college,
I see him go out on various adventures. I share with him, by letters and
confidences, the excitement of these adventures. I know with regret that
he suffers from ill-health and goes West, and there, with a great deal
of sympathy, I imagine him living, drearily enough, in some small,
health-giving Western town, writing his book and later his play which he
has so generously allowed me to produce."