He was aware of most of the words she spoke—random and wild, fantastic or pitiable, they all owned a rightness in the moment and were a part of the climbing waves. "O God, hurt me! Set thy mark on me, Benjamin, Benjamin. I want thy seed. À moi! Now! Now! Benjamin—thy bright mouth—ainsi je vais, je vais avec toi jusqu'à la fin de la terre."
Out of limitless quiet, his face on her satin shoulder, Ben asked: "Have I hurt thee?"
"No. Yes...." And again with the faintest moth-wing touch of laughter: "No...."
He drew away from her; presently sat up and saw her lying still, with wet cheeks and closed eyes, near and defenseless, wholly quiet. She said: "I will not yet open my eyes." And she did not, even when—timidly this time and bewildered at his own impulse—Ben curved his hand over the golden round of her breast where fading sunlight lay across it.
"Clarissa, forgive me."
She looked at him then, pools of darkness opening, filling with amazement, then sorrow, then showing him such a remote and ruminative blankness that Ben was frightened as a child, for it seemed to him that what his own voice had said was monstrous, and nothing said now or later could redeem it. She stood, unconcerned at her nakedness, looking down at him he knew, the abyss between self and self widening. At length she asked with much coolness: "What does that mean?"
"Clarissa, I did never intend"——Oh, close my mouth, anything I say makes it worse, and I go on spilling words—"We were swept away—I never intended—I've—sinned—betrayed——"
He managed to stop the noise. She was silent; he could not even hear her breathing. Forced by the silence to look up at last, he found as he had known he would the high blaze of contempt. "Sin? Betrayal?..." Then—he had known this too and feared it more than anything else—contempt and anger were gone, closed away altogether by a mask impenetrable and cruelly polite. The mask said gently: "Shall I help you with your clothes, Mr. Cory?"
He thought with a resentment that could accomplish nothing: Nay, I didn't deserve that.
The mask softened a little; a brittle thing quivering, but because it was so greatly needed it would not break. She caught her breath and said: "Oh, I am sorry! Forgive me too—if you can." She caught up her clothes in a clumsy armful and ran barefoot out of the room.