* * * * *
But I was saying that when Clark left me, I was drawing on my gloves to
go to see my _fiancee_, the Countess Clodagh, when I heard the two
voices most clearly.
Sometimes the urgency of one or other impulse is so overpowering, that
there is no resisting it: and it was so then with the one that bid me
go.
I had to traverse the distance between Harley Street and Hanover Square,
and all the time it was as though something shouted at my physical ear:
'Since you go, breathe no word of the _Boreal_, and Clark's visit'; and
another shout: 'Tell, tell, hide nothing!'
It seemed to last a month: yet it was only some minutes before I was in
Hanover Square, and Clodagh in my arms.
She was, in my opinion, the most superb of creatures, Clodagh--that
haughty neck which seemed always scorning something just behind her left
shoulder. Superb! but ah--I know it now--a godless woman, Clodagh, a
bitter heart.
Clodagh once confessed to me that her favourite character in history was
Lucrezia Borgia, and when she saw my horror, immediately added: 'Well,
no, I am only joking!' Such was her duplicity: for I see now that she
lived in the constant effort to hide her heinous heart from me.
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