“She shouldn’t write them to such a man!” Mrs. Touchett scornfully corrected.
“I never keep letters,” said Mrs. Armiger, under the obvious impression that she was contributing a valuable point to the discussion.
There was a general laugh, and Flamel, who had not spoken, said, lazily, “You women are too incurably subjective. I venture to say that most men would see in those letters merely their immense literary value, their significance as documents. The personal side doesn’t count where there’s so much else.”
“Oh, we all know you haven’t any principles,” Mrs. Armiger declared; and Alexa Glennard, lifting an indolent smile, said: “I shall never write you a love-letter, Mr. Flamel.”
Glennard moved away impatiently. Such talk was as tedious as the buzzing of gnats. He wondered why his wife had wanted to drag him on such a senseless expedition. . . . He hated Flamel’s crowd– and what business had Flamel himself to interfere in that way, standing up for the publication of the letters as though Glennard needed his defence? . . .
Glennard turned his head and saw that Flamel had drawn a seat to Alexa’s elbow and was speaking to her in a low tone. The other groups had scattered, straying in twos along the deck. It came over Glennard that he should never again be able to see Flamel speaking to his wife without the sense of sick mistrust that now loosened his joints. . . .
Alexa, the next morning, over their early breakfast, surprised her husband by an unexpected request.
“Will you bring me those letters from town?” she asked.
“What letters?” he said, putting down his cup. He felt himself as helplessly vulnerable as a man who is lunged at in the dark.
“Mrs. Aubyn’s. The book they were all talking about yesterday.”
Glennard, carefully measuring his second cup of tea, said, with deliberation, “I didn’t know you cared about that sort of thing.”
She was, in fact, not a great reader, and a new book seldom reached her till it was, so to speak, on the home stretch; but she replied, with a gentle tenacity, “I think it would interest me because I read her life last year.”
“Her life? Where did you get that?”
“Someone lent it to me when it came out–Mr. Flamel, I think.”
His first impulse was to exclaim, “Why the devil do you borrow books of Flamel? I can buy you all you want–” but he felt himself irresistibly forced into an attitude of smiling compliance. “Flamel always has the newest books going, hasn’t he? You must be careful, by the way, about returning what he lends you. He’s rather crotchety about his library.”
“Oh, I’m always very careful,” she said, with a touch of competence that struck him; and she added, as he caught up his hat: “Don’t forget the letters.”
Why had she asked for the book? Was her sudden wish to see it the result of some hint of Flamel’s? The thought turned Glennard sick, but he preserved sufficient lucidity to tell himself, a moment later, that his last hope of self-control would be lost if he yielded to the temptation of seeing a hidden purpose in everything she said and did. How much Flamel guessed, he had no means of divining; nor could he predicate, from what he knew of the man, to what use his inferences might be put. The very qualities that had made Flamel a useful adviser made him the most dangerous of accomplices. Glennard felt himself agrope among alien forces that his own act had set in motion. . . .
Alexa was a woman of few requirements; but her wishes, even in trifles, had a definiteness that distinguished them from the fluid impulses of her kind. He knew that, having once asked for the book, she would not forget it; and he put aside, as an ineffectual expedient, his momentary idea of applying for it at the circulating library and telling her that all the copies were out. If the book was to be bought it had better be bought at once. He left his office earlier than usual and turned in at the first book-shop on his way to the train. The show-window was stacked with conspicuously lettered volumes. “Margaret Aubyn” flashed back at him in endless repetition. He plunged into the shop and came on a counter where the name reiterated itself on row after row of bindings. It seemed to have driven the rest of literature to the back shelves. He caught up a copy, tossing the money to an astonished clerk who pursued him to the door with the unheeded offer to wrap up the volumes.