That bond.
Would it hold?
Had this man offered her something that would make love seem insignificant and trivial? She, who had had a surfeit of love long since? Whose eyes had looked a thousand years old until he had given her mind back its youth as the great Vienna biologist had rejuvenated her body.
He was entirely indifferent to her old love affair with Hohenhauer. It was those years of political association and mutual interdependence in Vienna that he feared. He had, when he first met her, appraised her as a woman to whom power was the breath of life. Ambition—in the grand manner—incarnate. She had all the appearance and the air of a woman to whom the wielding of power, however subtly, was an old story. He recalled that that terrifying suggestion of concealed ruthless forces behind those charming manners, those feminine wiles, had almost made him resolve to "avoid her like the plague." And then he had fallen madly in love with her and forgotten everything but the woman.
He had divined even before these last miraculous days that she had looked upon love with abhorrence for almost half as many years as he had lived, an abhorrence rooted in a profound revulsion of body and mind and spirit. For nearly twenty years that revulsion had endured and eaten into the very depths of her being.… He had a sudden blaze of enlightenment. She had frequently alluded to that Lodge of hers in the Dolomites and their sojourn there together, but always in the terms of romance.… She had never given him a glance of understanding.… And she had put off the wedding until the last possible moment.… If she had really been as eager as himself she would have left her power of attorney with Trent and started for Austria six weeks ago. Or the papers could have been sent to her to sign, if her signature were imperative.… And in spite of the fact that everybody had taken the engagement for granted, she had, with wholly insufficient reasons,—as he saw, now that he was removed from the influence of her plausible and dominating self,—refused to announce it. Could it be that in the depths of her mind—unadmitted by her consciousness—she had never intended to marry him? Was that old revulsion paramount? … Sixteen years!… A long time, and nothing in life is more corroding than habit.
Perhaps—as long as they were down there in New York. But not up here. That he would be willing to swear. There had been another revolution, involuntary perhaps, but the stronger for that; and every shackle that memory and habit can forge had dropped from her. She had been youth incarnate. The proof was in her joyful consent to marry him immediately and remain in the mountains … and then her complete surrender of the future into his hands.… She had during those three brief days loved him wholly, and without a shadow in her soul.
But now? Whatever had happened, she was not Mary Ogden tonight, hastening to New York, nor would she be when in her own house on the morrow. She might hate Hohenhauer, but his mere presence would have made the past live again. She must have known when she went down that mountain that even with her strong will and powers of self-delusion, things could not be quite the same again. Not even if she had returned with Dinwiddie. Why in heaven's name had she been so mad as to go? She could have sent Hohenhauer a peremptory refusal to see him and then gone off on a camping trip that could have lasted until he gave up the game. She must have been mad—mad.
And he did not believe for a moment that she had gone to Washington.
She had gone home to think—think.
And if he followed Dinwiddie's advice and remained here she might think too long. And if he followed and insisted upon seeing her, the result might be more fatal still. He knew nothing of those personalities she may have concealed from him. For all he knew she might have depths in her nature as black as the bottomless pit.