'You owe everything to Charles Mann. He found me in a studio in Paris
when I was very miserable and let me live in his art. I don't want you
to quarrel with him. We've got to keep him safe, because there aren't
many Charleses and I want you to ask him to supper to-morrow night....
I won't come if he doesn't.'
'I can feel success in the air,' said Sir Henry. 'It is like the old
days. But suppose--er--something happened to him.'
Clara laughed, a thin, tired laugh. She was so weary of them harping
on the silly story.
'I should go and tell them the truth, that I made him marry me and
they'd let him go,' she said.
'It's such a waste of you,' said Sir Henry, sighing. 'You're not in
love with him.'
She stared at him in astonishment.
'No,' she said, shocked into speaking the truth of her heart.
He crushed her in his arms, kissed her, gave a fat sigh, and staggered
dramatically from the room. He had kissed her neck, her arms, her
hands. She rushed to her basin and washed them clean.... Shaking with
disgust and anger, she gazed at herself in her mirror, and was startled
at the reflection. It was not Ariel that she saw, but Clara Day, a new
Clara, a girl who stared in wonder at herself, gazed into her own eyes
and through them, deep into her heart, and knew that she was in love.
Her hand went to her throat to caress its whiteness. She shivered and
shook herself free at last of all the obsessions that had crowded in
her mind for so long, and she lost all knowledge of her surroundings
and she could hear Rodd's beautiful deep voice saying,--
'Ay, that's it, to learn the tricks and keep decent. That's what one
stands out for.'