He found, as they almost ran along the dim platform across to the one opposite, and as he pushed her into a compartment of the Paris train that stood there, that she was laughing. The adventure of it, the excitement, Lord Epsil’s discomfiture, appealed, evidently, to her sense of mirth.
There were other occupants of the carriage, and Damier was thankful for it. He did not want to talk to Claire. To reproach her would make him as ridiculous as beating a tin pan in the expectation of response other than a mocking cachinnation; not to reproach might seem to condone by comprehension. Yet, as she sank back into a corner, settled her shoulder in it, he saw that there was emotion under the laughter, that it was not only the tin-pan rattle. He could interpret it as almost a regret—a regret for something against which she had always rebelled, from which she had now finally freed herself, a sudden realization that forever she had lost the standing upon which he had found her. Yet, over this trace of emotion and suffering, that, to Damier, was more piteous than anything he had yet seen in her, she smiled at him, with half-dropped lids. It was the look, with her a new one, of brazening a shame. Already her nature had retaliated upon the wrong she had done it by fixing in her face a more apparent ugliness of expression. She glanced round at the sleepy, respectable occupants of the carriage, their sleepiness, however, keeping an eye upon this startling young person in her white dress.
“Before we relapse into an irrevocable silence,” she said, “let me inform you—it will complete your evil opinion of me—that I didn’t really care about him; I cared for his caring about me—though at moments even that fatigued me, il m’embêtait quelquefois; but then, I was glad to be revenged.”
“Upon you both—for making me feel that I was not of your world.”
“We did not make you feel it, Claire.”
For some moments they were silent, as the train moved slowly from the station, and then she said:
“Where will you take me?”
“To his cousin’s, Mademoiselle Daunay’s. I have arranged all with him.”
A look, almost tremulous under its attempt at a light sneer, crossed her face.