She shrugged her shoulders. “Bien! I understand, too. I will fulfil myself.” She half rose, then sank again. “How much?” He mentioned the sum—not a small one. “Make it two thirds,” said Claire, keeping her dilated eyes upon him with an effect of final and defiant revelation.
“Two thirds, then,” he assented, in the steadied voice of one who does not dare hurry indecision. Yet, even now, she did not rise.
“One more condition, please. I do not see my mother again. Let us say, if you like, that I am ashamed to meet her.”
“She has not been told—of this.”
“Yes, she has,” said Claire. “I wrote and told her.” There was the satisfaction of achievement in the way she said it. “Oh, yes; she knows.”
“Yet, even after that,—your vengeance, I suppose,—I hardly dare make the promise for her,—she can forgive—even this.”
“Ah,” and the hoarse note was in Claire’s voice, “but I can’t take forgiveness from her. I have left the world where such episodes as this need forgiveness. Tolerance is now all that I will endure—and she will never tolerate. No; I will not come with you; I will not return to Monsieur Daunay and to respectability—unless you promise that I shall never see her again.”
“I promise it, then, if it is the condition.”
“You accept? Bien!” Claire sprang up, and ripping an illustration from a magazine, she scribbled on the blank back, “Have decided, after all, that I won’t come,” transfixed it with a hat-pin to the cushioned back of Lord Epsil’s vacated seat, then, as rapidly, reached for two of the bandboxes, pulled them, rattling, from the racks, stooped and jerked a large pasteboard box from under a seat, and, encumbered as she already was, caught up from among the rugs and bags several smaller packages, dexterously holding them to her sides with her elbows.
Damier, who had stared, hardly comprehending, gripped her wrist. “Put them down.” She gazed round in sincere amazement; then, with quite a humorous laugh, dropped the booty. “I really forgot! No, it wouldn’t be fair play, would it?—though, I confess, I should like to take a little vengeance; he has irritated me, been too complacent, too assured. This, too?” She touched the silk traveling-cloak. Damier, without speaking, stripped it off her; then, catching her by the arm, he almost dragged her from the carriage, for her feet stumbled among the dressing-cases and the abandoned boxes.