“You must, indeed.” The full rigor of his eyes met the astonishment of hers.
“Never!” said Claire, and in French, as if for a more personal and intimate emphasis, she repeated: “Jamais!”
“I will, then; it is an outrage not to tell her.”
Their eyes measured each other’s resolution.
“If you do,” said Claire, “shall I tell you with what I retaliate? I will run away with Monsieur Daunay. Yes; I speak seriously. I would prefer not to be pushed to that extremity, but I sometimes think that I am getting a little tired of respectability au quatrième. It isn’t good enough, as you English say; I get no interest on my investment. To tell her! Now, of all times, when I so need the money, when the small gaieties and pleasures you have brought into my life depend on my having it, making an appearance! She would not let me take it. She would be glacial—and firm. Oh, I have had scenes with her! I could not stand any more.”
For once Claire was fully vehement, her cheeks flaming, her eyes at once threatening and appealing. He could hardly believe her serious, and yet she silenced him—indeed, she terrified him. Claire read the terror in his wide eyes and whitening lips. Her look suddenly grew soft, humorous. She slipped her hand inside his arm.
Involuntarily he started from her, then, repenting, for even while he so loathed her he had never found her so piteous, “I beg your pardon—but you horrify me too much.”
“Come, come,” she said, and, unresentfully, though with some determination, she secured his arm, “don’t take me au pied de la lettre. I am not really in earnest; you know that; I had to use a threat—had to frighten you. Come.” That she had been able so thoroughly to frighten him seemed to have restored in her her old air of complacent mastery. “You are wide-minded, clever, kind. Don’t misjudge me. Don’t push me to the wall. Don’t apply impossible standards to me. See me as I am. By nature, by temperament, I am simply a bohemian. It isn’t my fault if my mother happens to be a saint, and a horribly well-bred saint; it really isn’t my fault if she has handed on to me neither of those qualities. I am perfectly frank with you. From the first I felt that I could be frank with you; I felt that you understood me; don’t tell me now that I was mistaken.”
“I do understand you,” said Damier, “but you horrify me none the less.”
“I horrify you because I am a creature thwarted, distorted; nothing is more ugly or repulsive—but if I had had a chance!”