At The Villa Rose

"It is not true, monsieur," cried Celia earnestly. "I tried to

stop the seances because now for the first time I recognised that

I had been playing with a dangerous thing. It was a revelation to

me. I did not know what to do. Mme. Dauvray would promise me

everything, give me everything, if only I would consent when I

refused. I was terribly frightened of what would happen. I did not

want power over people. I knew it was not good for her that she

should suffer so much excitement. No, I did not know what to do.

And so we all moved to Aix."

And there she met Harry Wethermill on the second day after her

arrival, and proceeded straightway for the first time to fall in

love. To Celia it seemed that at last that had happened for which

she had so longed. She began really to live as she understood life

at this time. The day, until she met Harry Wethermill, was one

flash of joyous expectation; the hours when they were together a

time of contentment which thrilled with some chance meeting of the

hands into an exquisite happiness. Mme. Dauvray understood quickly

what was the matter, and laughed at her affectionately.

"Celie, my dear," she said, "your friend, M. Wethermill--'Arry, is

it not? See, I pronounce your tongue--will not be as comfortable

as the nice, fat, bourgeois gentleman I meant to find for you.

But, since you are young, naturally you want storms. And there

will be storms, Celie," she concluded, with a laugh.

Celia blushed.

"I suppose there will," she said regretfully. There were, indeed,

moments when she was frightened of Harry Wethermill, but

frightened with a delicious thrill of knowledge that he was only

stern because he cared so much.

But in a day or two there began to intrude upon her happiness a

stinging dissatisfaction with her past life. At times she fell

into melancholy, comparing her career with that of the man who

loved her. At times she came near to an extreme irritation with

Helene Vauquier. Her lover was in her thoughts. As she put it

herself: "I wanted always to look my best, and always to be very good."

Good in the essentials of life, that is to be understood. She had

lived in a lax world. She was not particularly troubled by the

character of her associates; she was untouched by them; she liked

her fling at the baccarat-tables. These were details, and did not

distress her. Love had not turned her into a Puritan. But certain

recollections plagued her soul. The visit to the restaurant at

Montmartre, for instance, and the seances. Of these, indeed, she

thought to have made an end. There were the baccarat-rooms, the

beauty of the town and the neighbourhood to distract Mme. Dauvray.

Celia kept her thoughts away from seances. There was no seance as

yet held in the Villa Rose. And there would have been none but for

Helene Vauquier.