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All London was talking of it, but Hugh Alston never remembered what it was about. He was thinking of a girl with cold disdainful looks that changed suddenly to softness and tenderness. She sat beside him as she had sat opposite to him at dinner. On the stage the actors talked meaningless stuff; nothing was real, save this girl beside him.
But people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not touch them. Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was passionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his side because of gratitude, and in expectation.
It was the boy who heard and saw everything, and remembered and weighed it, with a feeling of alarm that he knew no reason for, and could not explain to himself. It was his instinct to dislike anything that William Pressley said or did, and to distrust everything in which Philip Alston was concerned.
So Alston did now light his cigarette and they went on smoking. They talked about the boys at their game and only when the players came down to the scow, presumably to push over and buy doughnuts of Ma'am Fowler, did they get up to go.
Choate, stately in dark silk and lace and quite unlike the revolutionary matron who had lain in bed and let her soul loose with the "Mysteries of Paris," sat between her son and daughter and was silent though she grew bright-eyed. Mary whispered to her: "Anne looks very sweet, doesn't she? but not at all like a dancer." "Sweet," said the mother. "Anne doesn't belong there, does she?" said Alston.
"I've forgotten every other thing that ever happened to me, all except this miserable thing I've just told you. I had to tell you, so you'd know the worst of me. Darling Anne!" He liked the sound of it. "I must go," said Anne. "You'd better," said Alston. "It'll be much nicer to ask you the rest of it in a proper place. Anne, I've had so much to do with proper places I'm sick of 'em.
It was not for a nature like hers ever to understand that a nature like his would, if it could, bend the whole universe to his own ends without a doubt that such was its best possible use. Philip Alston, also, was regarding William Pressley with rather an inscrutable look.
She felt that he did not like Philip Alston, and there was distress in the thought that these two, whom she loved most out of all on earth, should not be the warmest of friends. "You mustn't think him indifferent because he hasn't been to see you," she pleaded. "Please don't think that, for it isn't true. He hasn't come because he never can bear the sight of suffering.
And Reardon got out of the room, feeling rather more of a sneak than Alston had when he went away. Esther stood still until she heard the door close behind him. Then she ran out of the room and upstairs, to hide herself, if she could, from the exasperated thought of the men who had failed her. She hated them all. They owed her something, protection, or cherishing tenderness.
And as he did so Charmian saw his face change. Once or twice his jaw quivered. His brows came down. He turned sideways on the sofa. Very soon she saw that he was with difficulty controlling some strong emotion. She began to talk to Alston Lake and turned her eyes away from her husband. But presently she heard the rustle of paper and looked again.
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