Odd, white and shaken, still locked his arms about her.
“I was base if you will, too base for your loveliness; but you, my darling, have not a shadow on you; you were impossibly noble. Remember, that if there is dishonor, I am dishonored, not you; remember that I have done this!”
As he spoke, holding Hilda in his arms, the door opened and Katherine entered.
CHAPTER XI
KATHERINE closed the door swiftly behind her and looked at them, not with a horror of surprise for the betrayal, but a strange, stiffened look. She had on her travelling hat and coat, a wrap on her arm, and the thumping of her boxes was heard outside on the stairs.
Katherine had schemed and success was hers, but this unlooked-for achievement struck her like a dagger and made triumph bitter.
Fate had played for her; Fate and not she was the heroine. Katherine felt herself struck down from her masterly eminence, saw herself reduced to a miserable position, a tool with the other tools—Peter and Hilda.
To see Hilda thus was an undreamed-of shattering of ideals and pierced even her own humiliation, for Katherine almost unconsciously had looked up to Hilda. She was to use her, play her game with her, but for Hilda’s own advantage; she, not Fate, was to put her in Peter’s arms, unspotted and innocent of the combinations that had led her there. All Katherine’s plans in England had prospered and, in Paris, a nobly frank part awaited her. Avowal to Peter of incompatibility, her generous perception of his love for Hilda—a brave, manlike part—to which she had looked forward as to an atonement for the ulterior motives. And Katherine had almost persuaded herself that there would be little acting needed. Had she not seen, guessed, the truth? Had the truth not pained her, humiliated her? Had she not risen finely above her pain and wished them happiness? In moments of self-scorn, the ulterior motives, her own cautious look before leaping, had filled her with impatient scorchings, and Katherine could scorch herself as well as others in the pitiless flame of clear-sighted analysis. But was her own rebellion from the irksome standards of a higher nature—a rebellion that had carried her into such opposition as to fall below herself to a hard matter-of-fact ambition, touched with a sense of revenge upon her own disappointment,—was that rebellion, that ambition, so base, so pitiful?
Perhaps even the clearest analysis becomes sophistical if carried too far, and Katherine found excuses that explained for herself. But now all was base, all pitiful, and she, in contrast with Hilda’s fall, had risen. On this lowered platform, the advantage was hers, terribly hers, and it was good, good to lose self-scorn in her scorn for them.
She laid down her wrap on a table and began to slowly draw off her gloves.