Chapter XVI

That idea haunted him. Why, at least, hadn't she dropped him a line saying she was going away? Had the miserable spy, Alfred, given her a hint of Dora? He had spoken of the "orgy"--that's what the newspapers called it--at the studio. It made the fortune of the pie-girl, and the list of guest's names had been scrupulously printed, Ulick Invern's among the rest. It gave him vogue at the clubs, did that wretched bacchanale, and at the opera or theatre he saw women curiously regard him. Pulpits had expounded upon the Scarlet Woman sitting, on the Seven Hills of Babylon; meaning both Rome and New York. Why, then, shouldn't Mona have heard, perhaps read, of his complicity in the horrid debauch? Not that it was so horrid to him. More stupid, in fact, than horrid. Nevertheless, she might have written him a sweet scolding letter. No, it wasn't Ned Haldane's abridged version of a Thousand and One Nights that had angered her; it was Dora; Dora and nothing else. He shrugged his shoulders over this solution and went at once to see that bewitching young person. There, the nymph making her orisons, sitting on his lap, he became moody, absent-minded, and surly, so much so that the girl exclaimed: "Ulick Invern, what's the woman's name?" He didn't answer. He was glad she hadn't called him Jewel. Only Mona called him Jewel. Mona and Easter. He softly swore that Dora must never use his pet name, and in that resolution the character of Ulick flew like a flag. His was indeed a multiple personality.