“What forgiveness! Il est un peu lâche, vous savez.”
“Try, Claire, to deserve such touching lâcheté.”
Again Claire was, for some moments, silent; then, yawning slightly, yet, again his acuteness guessed, affectedly, she said, settling her shoulder more decisively in her corner:
“There is the more hope for my deserving it since now I am rich. You may make your mind easy about my future. I have got all that I ever really wanted.” It was the new and brazen note over the new shame; but as he looked at the face that first pretended to sleep, and that eventually did sleep, was not the brass the curious, anomalous shield that nature put around something growing—around a soul that at last, with a faint, half-conscious thrill, felt upon it the awakening breath of suffering?
XIX
The concierge was sweeping out the courtyard, and fixed on Damier a cogitating eye; his early visit and Claire’s absence were, no doubt, to her vigilant curiosity, symptoms of something unusual. The cogitation, though mingled with relief, was repeated at the door above in Angélique’s look. She was plainly glad to see him. Madame Vicaud had sat up all night, she volunteered, quite as if accepting him as a member of the family, privileged to confidences; she thought that madame had hoped for mademoiselle’s return, and she feared that the letter that had arrived from mademoiselle an hour before had much distressed madame. Perhaps Monsieur Damier could persuade her to have some coffee; she had eaten no dinner the night before, nor breakfast this morning. Damier promised to persuade, and Angélique ushered him into the salon.
He had never before seen it flooded with sunlight,—for this was his first morning visit,—and the windows overlooking the garden faced a radiant sky.
His eyes were dazzled, and the dark figure that rose to meet him seemed to waver in the light.
The calamity that had befallen her, at variance with the joyous setting in which he found her, showed in her white face—her eyes, still, as it were, astonished from the shock, dark with misery and a night of watching. On the table near which she had been sitting were a burnt-out candle, Lady Surfex’s telegram of the night before, and a letter, opening its large displayal of vigorous handwriting to the revealing day: Claire’s handwriting, Claire’s letter of farewell. Damier took Madame Vicaud’s hands and looked at her; the astonishment of her eyes hurt him more than their dry misery: after all, then, she had been so unprepared.