If he had been able to measure the molehill, he might not have been so sure of exaggeration. Andrée went on as if she could never walk enough, block after block, until the sun had gone, and twilight come, and lights began to glitter. She stopped in at the Plaza for a cup of tea.
“I’m ashamed of him! I’m ashamed of him!” she said to herself. “I’d be ashamed to have him here, with me. I only like him when we’re alone. I can’t bear for other people to see him. It’s like a nasty secret—amour.... It degrades me.... Oh, I ought to have had more pride than to throw myself away on a common little man like that! Oh, why didn’t someone stop me?”
§ iii
The next afternoon, at exactly the same hour, she was walking down Fifth Avenue with Malloy, and with him, went again into the Plaza for tea, no doubt to vindicate her pride.
And if it was a test, it was successful, for she was not ashamed of him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE PASTRY-COOK’S DAUGHTER
§ i
CLAUDINE mounted the front steps with an unusual languor.
“I’m afraid I’m going to be ill,” she thought. “This cold hangs on so.... I must have some hot tea and lie down.”
To tell the truth, she would not really have been sorry to be ill. It would have been a respite from the nightmare life of the past weeks. Nothing but worry and distress about her son, nothing but disgraceful quarrels between him and his father, and an exasperation and irritability on the part of Gilbert which terrified her. He blamed her for everything, for his disappointment in the boy, for the costly folly of the boy’s existence. Claudine was neither able to quarrel nor to keep silent. She felt obliged to defend Bertie, to make excuses for him, she even told lies for him, and paid his debts herself when she was able. Gilbert frequently found this out, and said that she deceived him treacherously, which was true. She was not at all contrite; she knew that with Bertie threats and bluster were of no use whatever; one had either to convince him by reasoning—which she was incapable of—or to win him through his affection, which was what she tried to do. She knew that he loved her perhaps more than anyone else had ever loved her.