Claude did not explicitly think this, much less say it. His chief difficulty in the way of reaching a straightforward understanding with Janet was that his mind did not work straightforwardly upon the problem of sex relations. His adopted radical professions were entirely subordinate to powerful, instinctive reactions along traditional lines.
Thus, at heart, he had little use for Janet's views about free love. To Janet, the term meant a public abandonment of an obsolete institution. To Claude, it was little more than a polite synonym for illicit intercourse.
Claude, in fact, had no deep quarrel with existing institutions. He prided himself on being tolerant, and his tolerance extended to the institutions of Bohemianism (which had no recognition in law), as well as to the institutions of the established order (which enjoyed this recognition). His support of "advanced" art, his membership in the Outlaws' Club, his philandering among the Lorillard tenementers—these were all ways of escape from the particularity of normal civilized life. Bohemianism, by systematically discarding troublesome forms, costly conventions and restrictive social obligations, really organized these ways of escape for him and provided a maximum of pleasure with a minimum of effort.
He was, therefore, by no means prepared to go as far as Janet wished to go, openly; yet he was fully prepared to go to the limit, clandestinely. So much so, that a severe critic like Robert would have said that Claude was deliberately taking advantage of Janet's inexperienced outlook on life. And it was quite true that Claude was willing to profit by her belief in free love, although he was far from willing to champion this belief, much less to become a martyr in its promotion.
But if he was exploiting Janet's infatuation for him, he was not doing so consciously. And the fact remained that, had she been so minded, she could just as easily have exploited his infatuation for her. Indeed, the latter would have been easier. Claude was not aware of this. He was aware only of his own power, and he believed he was exercising almost superhuman self-control in an effort to avoid compromising her future.
He believed he was doing this now, whilst fishing for an answer to Janet's candid "why not?" A few hours earlier, in Huntington, under the concerted pressure of the Armstrong family, he had realized that he would have to give up either Marjorie or Janet; and it had occurred to him that if he took Janet now, Marjorie was not lost to him later; whereas if he took Marjorie now, Janet was lost to him forever.
Naturally, it was not in terms of pitiless realism that he sought to explain his choice.
A more heroic explanation was that he had given up Marjorie for Janet's sake, and that, on a peremptory summons of the heart, he had run away from Huntington determined to risk everything—from his father's wrath to the loss of Mr. Armstrong's protection in the matter of smuggled diamonds. The heroic explanation was the one he meant to give to Janet.
Looking, at the moment, into Janet's gray eyes in their superb setting of long, dark lashes, he was ready to give his thoughts any form that might be acceptable to her. Surely, such a mixture of radical daring and native good sense, of enticement and candor, of self-reliance that ennobled her and soft yielding that flattered him—such a mixture had never before been found in one woman. It made her exquisite, enigmatic, thrilling and quite indispensable to him.
So reasoned his heart. And all his commanding nonchalance returned.