As he reached the house, he met Amaldi coming from it. It was only
eleven o'clock in the morning, an odd hour to call, but Amaldi had not
been to call, he had only stopped by for a moment to leave some music
that he had promised Sophy. He was most anxious to have news of her
after his anxiety about her last evening. So he took this excuse to stop
in.
The butler said that Mrs. Loring had breakfasted but had not come down
yet. It was only when the man told him that Sophy had breakfasted that
Amaldi realised how anxious he really had been. Then he turned away and
was face to face with Loring.
The young man gave him the barest, surly nod. His expression was
singularly hateful. Amaldi could not quite make it out. Loring had
always been perfectly negative in his manner to him, except when goaded
to a passing jealousy by Belinda. On those occasions he had usually
flung out of the room. Now Amaldi felt hatred in the fleeting insolence
of the look that brushed across his face as Loring passed. Was this
unaccountable, moody being going to take sudden umbrage at his
friendship with Sophy? He went on his way heavy of heart, anxious and
disquieted again.
Loring was met by Simms with a message. Mrs. Loring would like to see
Mr. Loring as soon as he came in. Mrs. Loring was upstairs in her
writing-room.
So she had not seen that "damned dago"! His anger dropped slightly.
Perhaps it was only some of Belinda's deviltry after all. He went
quickly towards the stairway, then slowed down a bit. It had just come
over him what was probably Sophy's reason for desiring this interview.
What if she had really been in the next room as Belinda thought? What
if she had seen and heard? And if she taxed him with it how should he
act? What should he answer? His thoughts whirled like the thoughts of
one coming out of chloroform.
He went doggedly on, after two pauses, and knocked at the door of
Sophy's study.
"Come in, Morris," she said at once.
He entered and, closing the door, remained near it an instant, looking
at her. Then he came slowly forward.
She had been writing. She put aside her portfolio as he came in. Her
figure in its white muslin gown lay sunk in the green hollow of her
chair, very listless. All the feverish light of the past evening had
faded from her face. Her eyes looked soft, grey and tired in their deep
shadows. They rested on his face with a sad depth of maternity that he
could not at all fathom. He was uneasy under this look, yet it had no
reproach in it. It was the look most terrible to Love. Hatred does not
wither him like that look. It comes from the heart that, comprehending
all, has forgiven all. To forgive all, one must detach oneself, become
impersonal. Sophy was now regarding Loring from this standpoint of
absolute detachment. Even the maternity in her look and feeling was
impersonal--the abstract sense of motherhood with which Eve, leaning
from the ramparts of her regained Paradise, might regard mankind. Loring
was not a man to Sophy that morning--he was mankind--a symbol. She, the
woman, symbolised the Mother.
It was this in her look that made Loring ill at ease, vaguely
apprehensive. But it was a look, to his mind, so out of keeping with
what he had feared might be the reason of her sending for him, that he
decided with intense relief that his conjecture must have been a
mistaken one.
"Hope you're not feeling very seedy," he said constrainedly. "You look a
bit done, you know."
"Yes-- I'm tired. Won't you sit in that other chair? It's more
comfortable."
He shifted to the other chair, feeling more and more ill at ease. As she
did not speak at once, he said nervously:
"You sent for me, didn't you?"
"Yes," she said. "I was only thinking how to begin."
Then she looked into his eyes with a clear, direct look.
"Morris," she said. "I am ashamed of something I did last night. I don't
make any excuse--but I'm very, very much ashamed.... It was the way
that I spoke to you and Belinda, when I came down to the
drawing-room--just before we went out to dinner...."
"Now, really, Sophy----" he began. He thought she was at some of her
"highbrow" subtleties. "I assure you that neither of us...."
Sophy broke in hastily.
"Wait, Morris.... I haven't done. I'm ashamed because I pretended not to
know--how things were between you two--and I did know."
As she said these words she flushed as deeply as Loring did in hearing
them. But she kept right on--she forced her eyes to remain on his.
"I was in the next room ... yesterday. I ... I ... saw...."
"For God's sake! ... don't!" exclaimed Loring, jumping up. He was white
now.
Sophy took away her eyes from that white face. For all her impersonality
of mood, that white, aghast face of his hurt her cruelly. The shame on
it hurt her. It made her feel desperately ashamed, too.
He went to the window and stood looking out, his back towards her. And
in the very lines of his back there was shame. And this shame wrung her,
struck to her inmost self. Oh, how humiliating it all was! ... for them
both! How she felt as though they were groping towards each other
through mire.
She caught at all her force of will.
"It's no use, Morris...." she said very low. "We _must_ talk frankly....
I hate it as much as you do.... Oh, I hate it.... I loathe it!" she
ended with an irrepressible cry from her sick heart.
He turned at that, his head down.
"Why must we?" he said thickly.
"Because it's _got_ to be clear ... it's _got_ to be straight between
us," she returned passionately. Her breast was heaving. She put up her
arm across it as though to hold it quiet by force. She had felt so calm,
had been so sure of her calmness. Now her heart was bounding as though
it would leap from her body. He turned again to the window, and she sat
silent until something of calmness had come back to her.
"Don't stand so far away," she then said hurriedly, and half under her
breath. "Come nearer. I ... I am not ... angry. I don't want to speak
loud.... Some one might hear."
He came nearer. He could not find any words. He had no thoughts which
words would have expressed. But Sophy was regaining control of herself.
Some of the oft-rehearsed sentences were coming back to her. Now they
were more or less in order. She uttered one, speaking clearly, in a
rather expressionless voice.
"Morris...." she said, "how much do you care for Belinda?"
He stared gloomily at the carpet.
"I rather think I hate her," he said.
Scorn choked Sophy. She could not speak again, either, for a moment.
Then she said:
"The person you have got to consider chiefly in all this is Belinda."
Now he stared at her.
"_Belinda?_" he stammered.
Sophy's face and voice grew hot. It seemed as though even Fate's
bludgeonings couldn't drub impulse out of her. She wrestled now with
this impulse for a moment. It got the better of her.
"For shame!" she cried. "Oh ... for shame! for _shame_! A young girl ...
in your own house ... you treat her like that ... your own kinswoman....
Oh, yes! I know.... But by bringing-up she is your kinswoman.... You do
this ... you do this...." She was stammering with the heavy heart-beats
that again suffocated her. "And then ... to _me_ ... you speak.... Oh,
let me breathe!" she cried, and stood up as if throwing off some
intolerable weight.
Loring stood changing from red to white, from white to red. His eyes
shone sullenly. His head was lowered in that way she knew. He looked up
at her defiantly from under the beautiful arch of the brows that she had
once loved. "Well?... And what course has your superiority mapped out
for me?" he sneered finally.
She said in a cold voice:
"I have 'mapped out' nothing. But there seems only one way to me.... To
be quite truthful about it all. Then ... to act truly."
He gave his ugly little laugh.
"Perhaps you'll favour me with your ideas on 'acting truly'?"
"I will. You love this girl...."
"Damn it! I've told you I hate her!" he broke out violently.
She tried hard to keep the contempt out of her voice. "You can hardly
expect me to accept that, Morris," she said gravely.
"Why not? You're so precious anxious for the truth. That's the truth.
Now you say you won't 'accept' it...."
Sophy sank wearily into her chair again. She found that it made her
giddy to stand. Her hands were damp and cold. She felt physically ill.
She covered her eyes for a moment, and in the momentary darkness her
truest self whispered to her.
She uncovered her face and looked at him with that first gentle, quiet,
to him inexplicable, look.
"Morris," she said softly, "don't you see? I want to be your
friend--really your friend in all this. I ... I understand how it has
happened. Yes ... better than you do perhaps. We ... we have drifted
apart. Oh, don't think I'm reproaching you----" she interrupted herself
proudly. "If you'll look back ... to ... to ... that time ... in
Virginia. When...."
She couldn't go on for a moment.
"When that glamour was on us both," she continued. "You'll remember that
I told you.... I warned you ... that it _was_ glamour ... that some day
... some day...."
No. She could not go on. Love--when it has been real, if only for an
hour--is always sacred. She sat very white, her chin in her hand, her
eyes downcast.
There was all about her the atmosphere of that wild, windy night when,
as she sat alone in the old house, he had rushed in to her like the very
Magic of Youth....
Still looking down, she said presently:
"Won't you even let me be your true friend, Morris?"
Very huskily he said:
"Well.... I ought to be grateful for that much...."
It was all horribly sad. She felt faint with the wasteful, useless
sadness of it all.
"What did you think of ... of proposing?" he asked, still in that husky,
beaten voice.
Sophy's own voice trembled a little when she spoke.
"I think this, Morris," she said. "I think your life ought to be free
... to offer to Belinda."
"'Free'? ... to offer ... '_free_'?" he gasped.
"I am willing to set you free...." she said.
There was silence. It lasted so long that she lifted her eyes to his
face. The look on it appalled her ... a sort of blasted look, as though
rage had struck like lightning.
"Are you ... are _you_...." he tried to get out his question. Choked on
it. He tore it out finally. "Are _you_ suggesting _divorce_ to me?"
"It is the only straight, honest way out of this ... this tangle,
Morris."
"You ... _you_ ... suggest divorce? Like that? Coolly ... _damned_
coolly ... as you might suggest a drive ... a walk...? Divorce?...
_You?_"
He jumped up, his face all distorted. He seized the chair in which he
had been sitting and dashed it with all his might against the wall. It
fell in splinters.
"Hell!" he almost sobbed at her. "Do you too take me for a fool?... 'A
common or garden fool'?... Do you, I say?... Now, then! Out with it! I'm
a soft fool you think. Hey?-- The sort of little, tame husband-fool that
never feels his budding antlers, till he sheds 'em in the divorce court?
Hey? That's what ... is it? You think so?..."
He was so incoherent with fury, that she could scarcely understand half
of what he said. The saliva churned at the corners of his mouth in the
frenzy of his sudden madness of jealous rage and suspicion. He'd show
her he saw through her noble unselfishness. She and her dago!
Sophy stared at him in horror. She thought that his brain had given way.
"Morris ... Morris...." she kept murmuring.
"O _God_...." he choked. "God ... God that you should take me for a
sucking fool--you and your dago ... you and your little Lombard
mucker.... You!--To _me_!... for _my_ sake!... 'Divorce'!... Set _me_
free!..."
He dropped across a table, hugging himself, shivering with stridulant,
choked laughter. He shook with it--was convulsed with it as with throes
of nausea. Long, steady drinking had its meet effect. He was hysterical
bedlamite--unmanned man--raging tiger of jealousy ... all these things
in one ... dreadful to see ... to hear....
Sophy stood gathered up and back from him. She looked dead--as though
she had died standing.
With Loring, the paroxysm passed. He clung to the table as to the
taffrail of a reeling ship. The whole world seemed waving like a flag.
Then suddenly, in a high, clear, toneless voice, Sophy said:
"I do not now offer to set you free.... I demand to be set free
myself...."
She went swiftly into the next room. He heard the key turn in the lock.
He went on clinging to the table which seemed to swing him to and fro.
He remembered hearing that rage kills sometimes. He thought for long
moments that he was dying.
For some days after he was, indeed, seriously ill.