She waited.
“Don’t you?” she asked.
He regarded her, the unhappy wife, the victim of so many peoples’ selfishness, and it suddenly occurred to him that after all, she wasn’t much more than a young girl. Only twenty-four.... The thought startled him. She was so young, so friendless, and yet so strong. She hadn’t gone under, she was not destroyed. What did that wretched “borrowing” amount to anyway? How had he dared reproach her with it?... He felt as if he could never take his eyes from that worn face, with its beautiful honesty and benevolence. After all, there must be some force in her forlorn youth that was greater than intellect, more irresistible than beauty, something indestructible, beyond his comprehension....
He turned away, dazzled by his vision.
CHAPTER FOUR
I
Rosaleen went upstairs to the studio, where the party was still going on. It didn’t seem possible; she felt as if days had gone by, almost as if she were a ghost coming back from another world. Nothing had happened, and yet everything had changed. Still the same row, the same love-making, the same hectic gaiety. Apparently no one had noticed her hours’ absence; she didn’t count, anyway, except to Mr. Brindell, and he had long ago gone home.
She went on with her superfluous hospitality. She was neither sleepy nor tired, nor was she in any way annoyed by the prolongation of the party. She was willing to continue indefinitely, winding up the phonograph, filling glasses, now and then dancing with a solitary man; she was in a waking dream, completely indifferent to the real world about her.