the dreadful news
to that undeceivable intuition which women were supposed to possess.
He hesitated on the stairs; he recoiled from the top step--(she had
coquettishly withdrawn herself into the room)--he hadn't the slightest
idea how to begin. Yes, the errand was an impossible one, and yet such
errands had to be performed by somebody, were daily being performed by
somebodies. Then he had the idea of telephoning privily to fetch her
cousin Sara. He would open by remarking casually to Concepcion:

"I say, can I use your telephone a minute?" He found a strange
Concepcion in the drawing-room. This was his first sight of Mrs.
Carlos Smith since the wedding. She wore a dress such as he had never
seen on her: a tea-gown--and for lunch! It could be called neither
neat nor prim, but it was voluptuous. Her complexion had bloomed; the
curves of her face were softer, her gestures more abandoned, her
gaze full of a bold and yet shamed self-consciousness, her dark
hair looser. He stood close to her; he stood within the aura of her
recently aroused temperament, and felt it. He thought, could not help
thinking: "Perhaps she bears within her the legacy of new life." He
could not help thinking of her name. He took her hot hand. She said
nothing, but just looked at him. He then said jauntily:

"I say, can I use your telephone a minute?" Fortunately, the telephone
was in the bedroom. He went farther upstairs and shut himself in the
bedroom, and saw naught but the telephone surrounded by the mysterious
influences of inanimate things in the gay, crowded room.

"Is that you, Mrs. Trevise? It's G.J. speaking. G.J.... Hoape. Yes.
Listen. I'm at Concepcion's for lunch, and I want you to come over as
quickly as you can. I've got very bad news indeed--the worst possible.
Carlos has been killed at the Front. What? Yes, awful, isn't it? She
doesn't know. I have the job of telling her."

Now that the words had been spoken in Concepcion's abode the reality
of Carlos Smith's death seemed more horribly convincing than before.
And G.J., speaker of the words, felt almost as guilty as though he
himself were responsible for the death. When he had rung off he stood
motionless in the room until the opening of the door startled him.
Concepcion appeared.

"If you've done corrupting my innocent telephone ..." she said, "lunch
is cooling."

He felt a murderer.

At the lunch-table she might have been a genuine South American.
Nobody could be less like Ch