Claire, clearly, Damier also saw, had never endangered her certain hold upon Monsieur Daunay’s usefulness by confessing to him her expectation of larger achievements. She would evade him, and hold him, as long as she had need of him.
Part of her anger to-day had, no doubt, been due to the fact that the sudden crisis had forced her into a decisive attitude toward him while yet uncertain that she could with safety give him up. Yet, indeed, she had been able to avoid absolute decisiveness—so Monsieur Daunay’s next words proved:
“She told me that all her affection was still mine, but owned to higher ambitions; she had never, she said, hidden from me that she was ambitious, and life now was opening new possibilities to her. Could affection and ambition be combined, had I a large fortune to gild my middle age and my unimportance, she would at once marry me.”
“She is utterly unworthy of you,” said Damier.
At this a faint, ironic smile crossed the Frenchman’s face. “Ah, mon ami,” he said, “you need not tell me that. If I love Claire, do not imagine, as I told you last night, that I am blinded by my love. I love her d’un amour fou—and I recognize it. She possesses me; she can do what she will with me; I should forgive her anything. But I know that I am a captive—and to no noble captor.”
“Just heavens!” Damier broke out, indifferent, in his indignant pity, to his own interests, “shake off this obsession—and her with it! Leave her; go away; do not see her again. What misery if you were to marry her!”
“What will you? I adore her!” His helplessness seemed final. He presently went on: “But I came to-day to ask for your help. You occupy a peculiar position toward Madame Vicaud and her daughter; you have influence with them both. Use it in my favor, I beg of you. Intercede for me.”
“Any influence I have shall, I promise you, be devoted to that purpose. I can hardly hope that your hopes will be realized; their realization could not be for your happiness. Pardon me, but have you never suspected that Claire is like her father—that she, too, is a miserable creature?”
For a long moment Daunay looked at him.
“She is like her father,” he then said; “but have you never suspected, or, rather, do you not now see, that, because of that, my claim is all the stronger? What man not knowing it, marrying her in ignorance of it, would not repent? I should never repent. She is like him, if you will, but she is, irrevocably, the woman I love. More than that, she is the child I love; I have watched her grow up. From the beginning, she has been ma petite Claire; so she will be to the end—whatever that end may be.”