“I know you despise me,” she insisted.
“But, dearest, I don’t! I honour you!” he always answered.
At last she tearfully confided her “secret” to him, and agreed to be married at once. She pretended to be glad, but she wasn’t. She hadn’t enough imagination to love an unseen child, and she certainly had no desire for one as a matter of principle. No more than an animal. And, like an animal, she was sure to love it when it came. Except for the fact that it gave her a hold on Lionel, she looked upon the whole affair as a bother and an expense. His delight seemed to her more or less absurd.
He really was delighted; really happy for the time being. He was lost in an utter and gross satisfaction.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I
Julie consented to go out with Horace one Sunday to see the young couple, although she was something more than reluctant. She was conscious of being an irreproachable woman and wife, so that when she wanted Lionel for herself, it was in a perfectly respectable way. She really needed him. Horace was forty, stout, and what this daughter of a “Cattle King” amazingly called “bourgeois.” As a husband he had advantages, such as money and complaisance and inferiority, but as a playmate, he wouldn’t do at all. Lionel was required for sweetness and light. She had always enjoyed quarrelling with him. She had liked to humiliate him, because she had secretly looked upon him as a superior being. She was disgusted with him for marrying.
She sat back in the limousine and talked petulantly about it to Horace. She had, of course, made the best of herself, looked her very loveliest, to make Lionel discontented and his wife miserable if possible. She was in white, a white serge frock and a small white toque from which floated a long wine-red veil. It gave her a sort of Oriental look, with her dark skin and immense, brilliant eyes. She knew Lionel would appreciate the effect.
“What’s the creature like?” she asked.
“Not pretty,” said Horace. “Dowdy, quiet little thing.”