§ 10
She stopped in her swift flight to him through the dusk of the Midi garden.
"Dearest, why is your face so white? Your hands bruised?"
"The consul said something to me—about you—and I knocked him down."
"Oh!" she said, a shocked little cry, and: "Oh!" a drawn-out wail of pain. "Why did you strike him?"
"Because he lied about you."
Her face was turned from him, in the dusk of the crickets, toward the wooded amphitheater, where dead Pontius roved wild-eyed in the dusk, where Lazarus tossed uneasily in his second sleep, where the Greeks lay in alien soil, and the shadows of Roman legionaries looked puzzled at the flat sea, not recognizing busy Tiber—her back was to him, her head up in pain, her nerve-wrenched hands uneasy, white....
"He didn't lie," she said at last. "Oh, you'd have known it sooner or later. No! no! He didn't lie."
"Claire-Anne!"
"He didn't lie. I was just a fool to think—oh, well, he didn't lie. No, no!" she repeated. "He didn't lie." She threw out a hand hopelessly. "He didn't lie."
He went up to her in the dusk, put his hands gently on her shoulders. The quivering frame became still suddenly, with a greater nervousness. She was like a deer ready to bound away....
"I don't see what I could have done, Claire-Anne. But—can I do anything now?"
She turned toward him suddenly. Her face was a mask of pain—and surprise.
"Then you haven't grown cold to me, unmerciful, ... or gross?"
"Why, no, Claire-Anne!"
"And you know."
"I—know, but I don't understand...."
She gave a queer, little shuddering cry, half laugh, half sob. She moved over to the seat by the whispering mulberry-tree, and dropped in it, her hands covering her face.
"All the wrong," she said, "that people call wrong I've done I didn't mind. But the one decent thing—of loving you—that's kept me awake all the time you were away. It's been like a sin, letting you love me. The rest was destiny, but this one thing was—I."
She suddenly raised her face, her eyes shining through the humid mask of it.
"Would you—could you—understand?"
"Tell me, Claire-Anne, what you want to."
She drew a short gasping breath, turned her head away, looked up, turned it away again, paused for breath, gripped his hand by the wrist....
"I ... I ... I was the child of actors, and they died, and there was enough money to bring me up and educate me, and give me my chance on the stage.... And I wasn't good enough.... I was too much myself. Couldn't quite be other characters. I don't know if you understand.... But ... then a man got infatuated with me and married me.... And later he wished he'd married a—comfortable woman with a fortune.... And then he died and left me ... not very much.... But that was not the reason.... I was left, how do you say?... stranded. I had no career, no husband, no child, no business. France, it is not easy ... not easy anywhere.... Friends? People are too busy.... And I was ... just there.... And all around me life bubbled and flowed, and I was ... not dead, not alive ... and alone ... I might have been a leper, but even lepers have colonies, and some one to be kind to them ... not dead, not alive ... and alone. I was so young.... It was unfair. Life was everywhere like a sparkling wine ... but where I was, was flat....
"And then—then I met a man ... it was pleasant for a while—to have some one to talk to, to go around with. It's so pleasant to laugh. You don't know how pleasant until you haven't laughed for a long time.... He didn't want to marry ... and in the end it was a choice of—oh, well ... or going back to being not dead, not alive ... and I couldn't go, just couldn't. And he gave me presents of money.... And then he got married. I don't blame him ... a comfortable woman with a fortune ... but I wasn't left for long.... Where one goes, others always follow.... There's a sort of ... sentier intuitif, a psychic path....
"And I wasn't so ashamed ... I was a little glad I had a place in the world ... a work even.... And every one might despise me.... I had a place.... I was no longer not dead, not alive.... I was even thankful for that.... Until I met you with your—terrible courtesy, with your understanding.... My head and my heart melted, and my body, too, and all had been so firm, so decided.... And I dreamed that I could snatch a while from destiny.... But—you see.... What the consul said was true, so ... dearest—but I mustn't ever call you dearest again."
"Claire-Anne!"
"Well, then—dearest, you see why I couldn't marry you when you asked." She laughed bitterly. "If you had only known...."
He took a terrible grip on himself, faced her, looked at her.
"Claire-Anne, will you marry me now?"
"I don't know why you say it, but I know one thing: you are true. And I thank you ... but please don't make me cry any more. I have cried so much when you were away.... If only five years ago before I was ... estropiée ... crippled....
"Destiny...."