Chapter IX

At half-past nine one evening that week, Bertram was seated in his sitting-room at Miss Blake's lodgings, making entries, as usual, on the subject of taboo in his big black notebook. It was a large bare room, furnished with the customary round rosewood centre table, and decorated by a pair of green china vases, a set of wax flowers under a big glass shade, and a picture representing two mythical beings, with women's faces and birds' wings, hovering over the figure of a sleeping baby. Suddenly a hurried knock at the door attracted his attention. "Come in," he said softly, in that gentle and almost deferential voice which he used alike to his equals and to the lodging-house servant. The door opened at once, and Frida entered.

She was pale as a ghost, and she stepped light with a terrified tread. Bertram could see at a glance she was profoundly agitated. For a moment he could hardly imagine the reason why: then he remembered all at once the strict harem rules by which married women in England are hemmed in and circumvented. To visit an unmarried man alone by night is contrary to tribal usage. He rose, and advanced towards his visitor with outstretched arms. "Why, Frida," he cried,--"Mrs. Monteith--no, Frida--what's the matter? What has happened since I left? You look so pale and startled."

Frida closed the door cautiously, flung herself down into a chair in a despairing attitude, and buried her face in her hands for some moments in silence. "O Mr. Ingledew," she cried at last, looking up in an agony of shame and doubt: "Bertram--I know it's wrong; I know it's wicked; I ought never to have come. Robert would kill me if he found out. But it's my one last chance, and I couldn't bear not to say good-bye to you--just this once--for ever."

Bertram gazed at her in astonishment. Long and intimately as he had lived among the various devotees of divine taboos the whole world over, it was with difficulty still he could recall, each time, each particular restriction of the various systems. Then it came home to him with a rush. He removed the poor girl's hands gently from her face, which she had buried once more in them for pure shame, and held them in his own. "Dear Frida," he said tenderly, stroking them as he spoke, "why, what does all this mean? What's this sudden thunderbolt? You've come here to-night without your husband's leave, and you're afraid he'll discover you?"

Frida spoke under her breath, in a voice half-choked with frequent sobs. "Don't talk too loud," she whispered. "Miss Blake doesn't know I'm here. If she did, she'd tell on me. I slipped in quietly through the open back door. But I felt I must--I really, really must. I couldn't stop away; I couldn't help it."

Bertram gazed at her, distressed. Her tone was distressing. Horror and indignation for a moment overcame him. She had had to slip in there like