She signified that she did with a nod of her head. She released him for one moment from her steady gaze; then she fixed her eyes on him again with the same interrogative suspense, as much as to say, “Well, then, if you were not sent, why are you here?” She could not sense a meaning that would have been plain to another woman.
It was the stupidity of goodness, he decided, and was charmed by a certain experimental fear of her. He must proceed cautiously. That was the delightful part of it, to be obliged to watch his step in an affair of this kind. He had no doubt of his ultimate success—a married woman, abandoned by her husband. He knew all about that by inference from Cutter. Cutter was too brazen in the conducting of his “bachelor” apartments not to feel perfectly safe.
He supposed there had been some sort of financial adjustment between him and his wife. He knew very well that the situation in New York would not last. Cutter was simply the profitable investment a certain beautiful and brilliant woman had chosen, who had the record of a sentimental rocket among the sporting financiers of the East. The first time he came a cropper in the markets, she would abandon him with the swiftness and insolence that would make the fellow’s head swim. Then Cutter would return to his wife. They always did.
Sometimes he had regretted not having a wife laid by himself as a sort of permanent stake, domestically speaking. If only he did not feel such revulsion toward the candor and monotonous details of actual married life. His decadent delicacy would be offended by the squalor of licensed intimacy with a woman. “Squalor” was the word he invariably used in discussing the psychology of marriage.
Still, he might marry Helen Cutter. She would never be in his way. She was not in her husband’s way now. And she was singularly refreshing to his jaded fancy. He had been so corrupt that, by revulsion rather than repentance, invincible virtue in a woman attracted him. Besides, it would be a good joke on Cutter to lose his wife—such a wife—while he was philandering in New York. He had always entertained a secret contempt for the fellow—a bounder who did not know how to bound; a gambler with the nerve of a financial adventurer. New York teemed with men of his type.
They had exchanged some commonplace remarks while he hit this line of reflection in the high places, having gone over it many times before. That is to say, he offered the remarks—on the weather, on the growth of Shannon, and more particularly upon the current aspects of the war. Helen’s contributions to these topics had been brief. He comprehended perfectly that she was still in suspense as to the meaning of his visit.
He rose presently, took his chair, advanced with a friendly air and sat down near her, potentially within reach. And was amused to see that she still regarded him as from a great distance. “But you have not answered my question,” he said, going back to that. “When are you coming to New York to live? Thought you would have been settled there long before this time.”
“I shall live here.”
“Never in New York?”
“No.”