He flung off her hand. His face worked. "For God's sake, go your way," he said, in a violent whisper, "and let me go mine! I'm tired of squatting on the steps of the temple. Let up on me, for God's sake! I don't interfere with you!..."
He was gone. And obeying a very natural if reprehensible impulse, he drank a glass more of champagne than he had intended to before Sophy spoke.
She turned and went quietly back towards the ballroom. To-morrow she would think things out more clearly. Certainly they could not continue as they were now. She had not meant to "nag." Yet she had nagged. Sophy had rare largenesses in her. She was neither as hurt nor as angered by Loring's words as most women would have been. She had reached that very chill room in Love's House, where it is easy to put one's self in another's place.
"But I can't go on like this ... not all my life," she thought wearily. Yet she saw no way out. The thought of divorce never occurred to her. She hated divorce as she hated other vulgarities. Yet, illogically enough, this view of the matter was only applied to her own case. She heartily and thoroughly approved of it for others. She even thought that marriage should be a civil contract, dissolvable by the mutual consent of both parties, or by the resolution even of one.
A woman of whom she was rather fond—Helen Van Raalt—spoke to her suddenly, touching her shoulder from behind.
"Sophy, dear, I'm dreadfully sorry to be so late! I had to take May to Fanny's party first, you know. And we've only just got away. And I've brought an old friend of yours along with me—my cousin—Marco Amaldi...."
XXVII
Sophy found herself with her hand in Amaldi's. She wanted to laugh nervously. She could think of nothing clearly for a moment.
Amaldi noticed how pale she was. She did not seem less beautiful than he remembered her, but his heart winced, for he thought that she looked ill.