“I understand, anyway. And it is appalling to think that if Petra’s mother hadn’t happened to die, Lowell might still be bound to her. She was puritanical or fundamentalist or something. Whatever the particular cult was, it was stupid and narrow and forbade divorce. She thought herself religious! Imagine calling such cruelty religion! But Providence had mercy, if she didn’t. She didn’t believe in birth control any more than she did in divorce, and she died when the second child was born, when Petra was only one year old. That, if anything, gives you the picture of how impossible Petra’s mother made things for her young, penniless, genius-husband—having another child right away. But the new baby was premature and fortunately lived only a little while.
“Lowell was through with marriage, he thought then, for all time. His religious wife had seared his faith in the sweetness of it as a human relation. But though seared, his faith was not actually destroyed. It has never been destroyed. Lowell Farwell has been bigger than the things life has done to him. Six or seven years later he saw Elsa Larsen in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Munich. Elsa Larsen’s acting was beautiful enough to break your heart. When she stuck to Shakespeare, anyway. She was really a great actress, even if this country never woke up to her. Did you ever see her? I saw her first in Munich, when I was a young girl. I spent the year I was twelve abroad with my mother. We went to the National Theater dozens of times to see Elsa Larsen in her Shakespeare roles. I never dreamed then that I should marry her husband one day! I may even have seen him, without knowing or remembering, in the theater. They were married inside of a week after they met. It was a perfectly wild marriage, of course. The result of utter loneliness on his part, mad infatuation on hers.
“Larsen killed herself. Yes, I know it isn’t known. And it is shocking. But she did it. She ran the car into those park gates on purpose. She meant to kill Lowell at the same time. He was begging her to get a divorce from him or let him get it, and she simply lost her head and drove straight into the gates. She saw that they were closed in plenty of time to have swerved. Lowell is certain of it.
“But what I want you to see and think about, Doctor, is Petra, of course. They put her in boarding school and she stayed there vacations and all, the few years till the so-called accident. But when poor Marian made Lowell think he had compromised her—yes, every one except Lowell himself, it seems, pretty well understood that little drama Marian staged at the Tillotsons’ house party—well, when Marian became Petra’s second stepmother, there wasn’t enough money to keep the child on at boarding school. Larsen spent all she earned and left nothing. They lived huddled up in that dreary little apartment in Cambridge with only one servant to do the work. How Marian hated it! She never lifted her hand for Petra or gave her a thought, except to resent her being there at all, one could see. But the thing Marian has really to blame herself for, to my mind, is the way she left the child to the sole companionship of whatever general-housework girl happened to be in possession of the place at the time. I myself was so appalled at seeing what Petra’s life was like when I met them, that even if I hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with Lowell I should have married him, almost, to rescue his daughter. All that was maternal in me was roused and fighting. That day I met you there—remember?—my heart was broken for Petra....
“So now you can see why I can’t blame Petra for any seeming disloyalty she may have displayed this afternoon in the talk you had with her. She has never known what it was to be loved before. How should she be counted on to return it, or even to be loyal to it? It is asking too much—even after three years, I think. But you see why I am grateful for your interest in her, and why I am ready, almost without questioning it, to act on any advice you care to give—now that you know the child’s miserable history.”
As she had been talking, Clare’s eyes had now and then been starry with tears, and on the final words one or two actually fell. She wiped them away, quite simply, with a handkerchief. She had no need to consider her make-up, as she never wore any.
Lewis withdrew his thought from a blue gentian, etched on air. He untied himself somehow and struggled up from his low place at Clare’s side. He asked if he might smoke. Clare had not remembered to offer him a cigarette because she herself did not smoke any more than she used make-up; but at once she was all charming apologies for her neglect and motioned him toward the supply near at hand. But Lewis, apologetic himself, preferred his own variety. He got out his case, lit a Lucky, took a deep inhalation,—and laughed.
Clare did not understand the laugh, considering all she had been saying to him—and her tears. But she waited. She had done what she could to make herself clear to him and it was his turn now. He must have some reaction other than that ambiguous laugh to all that she had said—and looked—during the past minutes.
He was pacing back and forth before the long divan, his hands deep in the already sagging pockets of his tweed jacket. They did not dress for dinner at the Allens, and Lewis was in Meadowbrook without his dress clothes. But when after a few seconds of this rather surprising behavior, the man whirled and stood before her, looking down at her, his face, at last, was beginning to mirror something—she was almost certain—of what she was. Clare thought she saw her generosity reflected in Doctor Pryne’s face as in a mirror. And on account of that true reflection of herself, she forgave him all the bewilderment and uncertainty he had for just a little while caused her. It was rather wonderful having his cold, sleepy eyes no longer cold and sleepy but aware of her. She had known all along of course that Doctor Lewis Pryne was a person of rare power and magnetism, but until this instant she had missed the biting tang of actually feeling it. To her own surprise her heart beat fast. Madly!
“Are you serious?” he was asking. “Do you really want advice from me? For I know what I would do in your place and I would do it like a shot. Shall I say?”