Belinda stretched upwards against him, like a luxurious young puma, relaxing to pleasure after a long strain of crouching watchfulness.
"Ah ... Morry...." she sighed, and she held up to his her parted, vaguely smiling lips.
XLIV
But that kiss-sealed oath to Belinda did not keep Loring from "going two ways" in his heart, for some time still. He was truly between two fires. He could not bear to let Sophy go in order to keep Belinda. It was unendurable to think of relinquishing Belinda that he might keep Sophy. In the end, however, Belinda won. When it came to the final test, he found that he could more easily let Sophy slip from him into a vague future than resign Belinda to the fat arms of Lewis Cuthbridge. And he suffered. For the best in him clung to Sophy, and he knew that it was with his best that he clung to her.
Belinda saw this inward struggle quite plainly. She remained calm in presence of it. Propinquity was her staunch ally. Besides, she had refused to break her engagement with Cuthbridge, until Morris could assure her—could let her see "with her own eyes"—that a divorce between him and Sophy had been decided upon past recall.
By the middle of December he was able to satisfy her in this respect. As soon as she was convinced that matters had reached an irrevocable point, she broke her engagement as she had promised. Then she set herself to blot out all possible regret on Loring's part. For this rôle nature had consummately endowed her. Loring's heart had no chance to ache. His frantic passion filled every crevice of his consciousness. Memories, doubts, regrets—all went scurrying before it, like wild things before the onrush of a prairie fire.
As "Venus Victrix," Belinda was quite wonderful. Yet though she was now wholly Venus and triumphant, she still kept homespun Respectability at her elbow. Not a hair's-breadth too far did she permit her inflammable lover to venture. Belinda as Goddess would have compelled all Olympus to address her as Mrs. Vulcan.
And so, towards the end of December, Sophy left Bobby in the care of Charlotte and Harold Grey, and went to desolate, far-western Ontowega. After six months of that desolation she would be free again. It seemed incredible. She did not go alone, however. Susan Pickett, a second cousin of whom she and Charlotte had been very fond since childhood, went with her. Miss Pickett was a delightful spinster of fifty. She had not married, simply because she had never loved a man enough to want to marry him.