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Afterwards, as they went out, they passed the Boleskis close, and the two rose and spoke to Verisschenzko, with empressement. He introduced Captain Ardayre and they talked for a few minutes, Harietta Boleski all smiles and flattering cajoleries now and then they said good-night and went out.
The table beneath it was arranged like an altar, and the Ikon was let in to the carved boiserie of the wall. It must have been since he had parted with her that this ridiculous thing had been done! She had not entered his appartement since June. She felt angry that the shrine should be closed and that she could not look upon it, for it must certainly be something which Verisschenzko prized.
"I am," said Verisschenzko, and leaving her for a moment he went and telephoned to his not unintelligent Russian servant at the Ritz to arrange about the transference of his rooms. "She requires the most careful watching I must waste no time." And then he returned to the party in the hall. Denzil Ardayre took up his letters which had been forwarded to him from the depot where he was stationed.
"Our toast before has always been to the Ardayre son, and now we drink to what I hope has been his creator!" They were silent for some moments, and then Verisschenzko went on: "When the state of being in love is waning, affection often remains, but then one is at the mercy of a new emotion. I'd be nervous if a woman who had loved me subsided into feeling affection!" "Then define loving?"
"My angel," she told him as they went along the passage, "that she-devil will kill thee one day, unless happily I can place thee in safety first. But if she does, then I will murder for myself! What has caused her fury tonight, some one has spoilt her game." In the oak-panelled smoking room, deserted by all but these two, Verisschenzko spoke to Stanislass, hastily, and in his own tongue.
Verisschenzko had watched the German covertly and saw that with all his forced stolidity an angry gleam had come into his eyes. "They have certainly met before and he knows me I must somehow make time," then, aloud: "You are looking a dream of beauty to-night, Harietta," he told her as they walked across the hall.
Amaryllis came up to London the following week to say good-bye to John, so Verisschenzko did not go down to Ardayre to see her. John's leave-taking was characteristic. He could not break through the iron band of his reserve, he longed to say something loving to her, but the more deeply he felt things the greater was his difficulty in self-expression.
She had thought while she dressed that her life had been one stupid rush with no end, since that night when they had talked of serious things at the Montivacchini hotel. She had need of the counsel he had promised to give her, for this heedless racket was not adding lustre to her soul. Verisschenzko seemed to find her very soon he was not one of those persons who miss things by vagueness.
He had "soldier" written upon him young, gallant, cavalry soldier. Verisschenzko appreciated him; nothing complete, human or inanimate, left him unconscious of its meaning. They knew one another very well they had been at Oxford and later had shot bears together in the Russian's far-off home.
What could this mean? Verisschenzko had come straight through from Petrograd to England. He had been delayed and had never returned to Paris since September. He knew nothing of Harietta's sacrilege as yet. But he had at last accumulated sufficient proof against her to have her entirely in his hands. He thought over the whole matter as he came down in the train to Ardayre.
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