But Clavering made no answer. His cigarette was burning a hole in the carpet. He mechanically set his foot on it, but his faculties felt suspended, his body immersed in ice-water. And yet something in his unconscious rose and laughed … and tossed up a key … if he had not fallen in love with her he would have found that key long since. His news sense rarely failed him.
"I've told a good many lies, I'm afraid," she went on, and her voice was even and cool. The worst was over. "You'll have to forgive me that at least. I dislike downright lying, if only because concessions are foreign to my nature, and I quibbled when it was possible; but when cornered there was no other way out. I had no intention of being forced to tell you or any one the truth until I chose to tell it."
"Well, you had your little comedy!"
"It did amuse me for a time, but I think I explained all that in my letter. I also explained why I came to America, and that if I had not met you I should probably have come and gone and no one but Judge Trent been the wiser. I had prepared him by letter, and to him, I suppose, it has been a huge comedy—with no tragic sequel. Be sure that I never entertained the thought that I could ever love any man again. But I have made up my mind to disenchant you as far as possible, not only for your sake but my own. I wish you to know exactly whom you have fallen in love with."
"You grow more interesting every moment," said Clavering politely, "and I have never been one-half as interested in my life."
"Perhaps you have heard—Mrs. Oglethorpe, I should think, would be very much disposed to talk about old times—that I was a great belle in New York—belles were fashionable in those days of more marked individuality. I suppose no girl ever had more proposals. Naturally I grew to understand my power over men perfectly. I had that white and regular beauty combined with animation and great sex-magnetism which always convinces men that under the snow volcanic fires are burning. I was experienced, under the frankest exterior, in all the subtle arts of the coquette. Men to me were a sort of musical instrument from which I could evoke any harmony or cacophony I chose.
"What held the men I played with and rejected was my real gift for good-fellowship, my loyalty in friendship, and some natural sweetness of disposition. But such power makes a woman, particularly while young, somewhat heartless and callous, and I was convinced that I had no capacity for love myself; especially as I found all men rather ridiculous. I met Otto Zattiany in Paris, where he was attached to the Embassy of the Dual Empire. He was an impetuous wooer and very handsome. I did not love him, but I was fascinated. Moreover, I was tired of American men and American life. Diplomacy appealed to my ambition, my love of power and intrigue. He was also a nobleman with great estates; there could be no suspicion that he was influenced by my fortune. He followed me back to New York, and although my parents were opposed to all foreigners, I had my way; there was the usual wedding in Saint Thomas's, and we sailed immediately for Europe.
"I hated him at once. I shall not go into the details of that marriage. Fortunately he soon tired of me and returned to his mistresses. To him I was the Galatea that no man could bring to life. But he was very proud of me and keenly aware of my value as the wife of an ambitious diplomatist. He treated me with courtesy, and concerned himself not at all with my private life. He knew my pride, and believed that where he had failed no man could succeed; in short, that I would never consider divorce nor elopement, nor even run the risk of less public scandals.
"I was not unhappy. I was rid of him. I had a great position and there was everything to distract my mind. I was not so interested in the inner workings of diplomacy as I was later, but the comedy of jealousy and intrigue in the diplomatic set was amusing from the first. I was very beautiful, I entertained magnificently, I was called the best-dressed woman in Paris, I was besieged by men—men who were a good deal more difficult to manage than chivalrous Americans, particularly as I was now married and the natural prey of the hunter. But it was several years before I could think of men without a shudder, little as I permitted them to suspect it. I learned to play the subtle and absorbing game of men and women as it is played to perfection in the bolder civilizations. It was all that gave vitality to the general game of society. I had no children; my establishment was run by a major domo; it bore little resemblance to a home. It was the brilliant artificial existence of a great lady, young, beautiful, and wealthy, in Europe before nineteen-fourteen. Of course that phase of life was suspended in Europe during the war. All the women I knew or heard of worked as hard as I did. Whether that terrible interregnum left its indelible seal on them, or whether they have rebounded to the old life, where conditions are less agonizing than in Vienna, I do not know."
She paused a moment, and Clavering unconsciously braced himself. Her initial revelation had left the deeper and more personal part of him stunned, and he was listening to her with a certain detachment. So far she had revealed little that Dinwiddie had not told him already, and as he knew that this brief recapitulation of her earlier life was not prompted by vanity, he could only wonder if it were the suggestive preface to that secret volume at which Dinwiddie had hinted more than once.