“I never saw but one woman I wanted to marry and as—that is forever denied me I shall never marry at all. I’m not the sort of man, I hope, to make love to the wife of my friend, but—I’d be grateful if you would take no further interest in my casual friendships with other women.” He was very white but his voice was hard and deliberate and his eyes angry. He lifted his fork and his sensitive fingers were steady.
Gita turned cold and the blood left her face and seemed to settle about her heart, whose thumping stirred the sunflower on her breast. She was astounded and horrified—and not at Geoffrey Pelham! And then she felt a sensation of sheer terror. What had happened to her? Of love in the sexual sense she was incapable and she assuredly felt for this man none of the calm active affection she so liberally bestowed on Eustace and her two other friends. She was barely conscious of liking him, although he had haunted her thoughts occasionally and had given her an odd sensation the night of the Christmas party. She had heard a great deal of the magnetic vibrations between men and women, inspired by nothing more elevated than the automatic response of the opposite poles of sex, but she was far removed from that category. She had lived in an atmosphere of sex since she came to New York and its vibrations had glanced off her as harmlessly as lightning from basalt. If she no longer regarded the subject with profound distaste she was totally uninterested. Eustace had taught her that men could be clean and decent and wholly admirable, and as a rule she chose to see only the fine side of the others and viewed their moral divagations with indifference.
She dropped her handkerchief on the side farthest from Pelham and bent down until the blood returned to her head, then switched on her analytical faculty. She had been startled—who would not be? Geoffrey Pelham!—and horrified that she was the innocent cause of desolation in two hearts capable of the highest happiness. Polly was doomed to bitter disappointment, and this honorable and remarkable man would go through life a dreary bachelor for her sake. (She was unable to visualize Polly as an old maid.) She felt Jezebelian. And loyalty flooded her for Eustace. For the moment she was almost angry at the man whose life she had unwittingly ruined, and craned her neck until her eyes found her husband, seated at a distant table, laughing and talking with every appearance of enjoyment. She caught his eye and they exchanged a glance of gay understanding which suffused her with a virtuous glow and enabled her to turn to Geoffrey, now at work on a peach. She said calmly:
“That was an awkward silence but you frightened me out of my wits. Will you peel me a peach? It’s a pleasure to watch you. And when I eat a hothouse peach in winter I feel as if I had dissolved a pearl in champagne—although Cleopatra’s wines must have been stronger than bootleggers’.”
CHAPTER V
It was Mrs. Pleyden’s habit to move to Atlantic City in April and she began her usual preparations on the day after the party in spite of remonstrances from Polly.
“I’m sick to death of Atlantic City and besides I hear they’re having a rainy spring. I’ve a lot of things on here and simply can’t go.”
She was lying on a sofa in her mother’s bedroom and wore a pale green negligée in delicate harmony with the pink of her cheeks, unimpaired by a cacophonous winter. As usual she was smoking.
Mrs. Pleyden, who was packing her jewels for the safe-deposit vault in her bank, looked up critically.
“I wish you would not smoke so much, if only for the sake of your complexion. The house in Chelsea is ready and the servants go tomorrow. I am surprised you made any engagements.”