"You must, indeed." The full rigor of his eyes met the astonishment of
hers.
"Never!" said Claire, and in French, as if for a more personal and
intimate emphasis, she repeated: "_Jamais!_"
"I will, then; it is an outrage not to tell her."
Their eyes measured each other's resolution.
"If you do," said Claire, "shall I tell you with what I retaliate? I
will run away with Monsieur Daunay. Yes; I speak seriously. I would
prefer not to be pushed to that extremity, but I sometimes think that I
am getting a little tired of respectability _au quatrième_. It isn't
good enough, as you English say; I get no interest on my investment. To
tell her! Now, of all times, when I so need the money, when the small
gaieties and pleasures you have brought into my life depend on my having
it, making an appearance! She would not let me take it. She would be
glacial--and firm. Oh, I have had scenes with her! I could not stand any
more."
For once Claire was fully vehement, her cheeks flaming, her eyes at once
threatening and appealing. He could hardly believe her serious, and yet
she silenced him--indeed, she terrified him. Claire read the terror in
his wide eyes and whitening lips. Her look suddenly grew soft, humorous.
She slipped her hand inside his arm.
Involuntarily he started from her, then, repenting, for even while he so
loathed her he had never found her so piteous, "I beg your pardon--but
you horrify me too much."
"Come, come," she said, and, unresentfully, though with some
determination, she secured his arm, "don't take me _au pied de la
lettre_. I am not really in earnest; you know that; I had to use a
threat--had to frighten you. Come." That she had been able so thoroughly
to frighten him seemed to have restored in her her old air of
complacent mastery. "You are wide-minded, clever, kind. Don't misjudge
me. Don't push me to the wall. Don't apply impossible standards to me.
See me as I am. By nature, by temperament, I am simply a bohemian. It
isn't my fault if my mother happens to be a saint, and a horribly
well-bred saint; it really isn't my fault if she has handed on to me
neither of those qualities. I am perfectly frank with you. From the
first I felt that I could be frank with you; I felt that you understood
me; don't tell me now that I was mistaken."
"I do understand you," said Damier, "but you horrify me none the less."
"I horrify you because I am a creature thwarted, distorted; nothing is
more ugly or repulsive--but if I had had a chance!"
"What would a chance have done for you? You have had every chance to be
noble and loving and happy--yes, happy."
"But not in my own way!--not in my own way!" she cried, and now she
clasped both hands on his arm and leaned against his shoulder as she
looked into his face. "I needed power and wealth--all the real
foundations of happiness and nobility. Then--ah, then I should have
blossomed. Or else, failing them, I needed liberty and joy--the life of
a bohemian. I have had neither the one nor the other, and if I seem
almost wicked to you it is because of that; for, to me, wickedness means
going against one's nature. I have always been forced to go against
mine; I have never had a chance."
Damier gave a mirthless laugh. "On the contrary, to me wickedness means
going with one's nature."
"Ah, there we differ; and yet we understand."
Again he had that feeling of perplexity and irritation. Her eyes, the
clasp of her hands upon his arm, irked and troubled him, and without,
now, any sense of glamour in the trouble and irritation. She seemed to
make too great a claim upon his understanding, and to rely too much
upon some conviction of her own charm that could dare any frankness just
because it was so sure of triumph. He felt that at the moment he did not
understand her; he felt, too, that he did not want to--that he was tired
of understanding her.
"You are an unhappy creature, Claire," he said. They were nearing the
Porte Dauphine, and while he spoke with a full yet distant gravity,
Damier looked about for a fiacre. "An unhappy creature with an
unawakened soul."
"Will you try to wake it, the poor thing?" asked Claire. She still held
his arm, though he had tried to disengage it, and though she spoke
softly, there was a vague hardness in her eyes, as though she felt the
new hardness in him, though as yet not quite interpreting its finality.
"I shouldn't know how to: I am helpless before it. It should be made to
suffer," he said. A cab had answered his summons, and he handed her into
it. "No, I cannot go home with you," he said. "Are you going home?"
"I am going to lunch with old Mademoiselle Daunay, and see Monsieur
Daunay there. I had no chance to speak to him last night." Claire,
sitting straightly in the open cab, had an expression of perplexity and
of growing resentment on her face; but as he merely bowed and was about
to turn away, she started forward and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Are you going to make it suffer?" she asked. He looked into her eyes.
He did not understand her, but he saw in them a demand at once alluring
and threatening. His one instinct was to deny strongly whatever she
demanded, though he did not know what that was.
"I have no mission toward your soul, Claire," he said. For another
moment the eyes that threatened and allured dwelt on his; then, calling
out the address to the cabman, she was driven away.