"Yes ... you told me. I remember."
"I hope nothing of ... of that sort will happen to-day."
"No." He had taken his spoon from the cup, and was staring down at it, as though he wanted to make sure of some flaw in its metal. His face was not merely pale; it had the worn look of severe anxiety. "You can have your luncheon-party with impunity. By the way, our own chef gets it up, doesn't he? You didn't have Delmonico or any one else in, did you?"
"No," she answered. "Pierre was to do it all. He had his full orders several days ago."
A fleet, bitter smile crossed Hollister's lips. He put his spoon back into the cup, but did not raise his eyes. "Oh, everything is safe enough for to-day," he said.
Claire moved slowly toward him. "Herbert," she said, and put forward one hand ... "I don't see why we should not be friends at a time like this. You were angry last night, and said things that I am sure you didn't mean—things that I've almost forgotten, and want entirely to forget. Let us both forget them. Let us be friends again, and talk matters over sensibly—as we ought to do."
She herself was not aware of the loveless chill that touched every word she had just spoken. There was something absolutely matter-of-fact in her tones; they rang with a kind of commercial loudness. It was almost as though she were proposing a mercantile truce between man and man.
Hollister visibly winced, and slowly rose from the table. Every sentence that she had uttered had bitten into his very soul. His pride was alive, and keenly so. But he was not at all angry; he felt too miserably saddened for that.
"Claire," he said, "we had best not talk of being friends. If I spoke to you harshly last night, I'm sorry. I don't quite recollect just what I did say. Of course we must have a serious talk about how we are to live in future. But not now, if you please—not now. Your luncheon will go off all properly enough. Things are not so bad as that. I shall be away until evening. Perhaps when I come home again we can have our talk."
Claire looked at him with hard, bright eyes. She assured herself that he had causelessly repulsed her. Even allowing the wrong that she had done him of marrying him without love, why should he now repel, by this self-contained austerity, an advance which, in her egotistic misery, she believed a sincere and spontaneous one? She was wholly unaware of her own unfortunate demeanor; it seemed to her that she had done her best; she had tried to conciliate, to appease, to mollify. Was not her note to Goldwin now in the pocket of her gown? Was not that note a defense of Herbert's own honor as of hers? She made the distinctly feminine error, while she rapidly surveyed the present contingency, of taking for granted that her husband possessed some obscure and mesmeric intuition regarding this same unseen piece of writing.