A Damsel in Distress

Indignation at the injustice of Fate in causing her to give her

heart to a man and then changing him into another and quite

different man fought with a cold terror, which grew as she realized

more and more clearly the magnitude of the mistake she had made.

She felt that she must escape. And yet how could she escape? She

had definitely pledged herself to this man. ("Ah!" cried Geoffrey

gaily, as the pats of butter arrived. "That's more like it!" He

began to smear the toast. Maud averted her eyes.) She had told him

that she loved him, that he was the whole world to her, that there

never would be anyone else. He had come to claim her. How could she

refuse him just because he was about thirty pounds overweight?

Geoffrey finished his meal. He took out a cigarette. ("No smoking,

please!" said the distressed gentlewoman.) He put the cigarette

back in its case. There was a new expression in his eyes now, a

tender expression. For the first time since they had met Maud

seemed to catch a far-off glimpse of the man she had loved in

Wales. Butter appeared to have softened Geoffrey.

"So you couldn't wait!" he said with pathos.

Maud did not understand.

"I waited over a quarter of an hour. It was you who were late."

"I don't mean that. I am referring to your engagement. I saw the

announcement in the Morning Post. Well, I hope you will let me

offer you my best wishes. This Mr. George Bevan, whoever he is, is

lucky."

Maud had opened her mouth to explain, to say that it was all a

mistake. She closed it again without speaking.

"So you couldn't wait!" proceeded Geoffrey with gentle regret.

"Well, I suppose I ought not to blame you. You are at an age when

it is easy to forget. I had no right to hope that you would be

proof against a few months' separation. I expected too much. But it

is ironical, isn't it! There was I, thinking always of those days

last summer when we were everything to each other, while you had

forgotten me--Forgotten me!" sighed Geoffrey. He picked a fragment

of cake absently off the tablecloth and inserted it in his mouth.

The unfairness of the attack stung Maud to speech. She looked back

over the months, thought of all she had suffered, and ached with

self-pity.

"I hadn't," she cried.

"You hadn't? But you let this other man, this George Bevan, make

love to you."

"I didn't! That was all a mistake."

"A mistake?"

"Yes. It would take too long to explain, but . . ." She stopped. It

had come to her suddenly, in a flash of clear vision, that the

mistake was one which she had no desire to correct. She felt like

one who, lost in a jungle, comes out after long wandering into the

open air. For days she had been thinking confusedly, unable to

interpret her own emotions: and now everything had abruptly become

clarified. It was as if the sight of Geoffrey had been the key to a

cipher. She loved George Bevan, the man she had sent out of her

life for ever. She knew it now, and the shock of realization made

her feel faint and helpless. And, mingled with the shock of

realization, there came to her the mortification of knowing that

her aunt, Lady Caroline, and her brother, Percy, had been right

after all. What she had mistaken for the love of a lifetime had

been, as they had so often insisted, a mere infatuation, unable to

survive the spectacle of a Geoffrey who had been eating too much

butter and had put on flesh.