"Did he tell you? Tell you how close he came? Tell you that I was in love with him?"
"My dear Gora, I fancy that if he were capable of that you would not be capable of loving him. I certainly should not." There was a slight movement in her throat as if she were swallowing the rest of the truth whole. She had adhered to it where she could but Gora's face must be saved. "Your name was not mentioned. I asked him no questions about his past. I am not the heroine of a novel, old style. He told me that he loved me, that he had never loved any other woman, never asked any other woman to marry him. That was enough for me. I had no place in my mind for you or any one else. Perhaps you don't know—how could you—that years ago, when he was in California, he asked me to marry him."
"Calf love! If you had not been here now—"
"He would have gone to California as soon as he could get away. He had made up his mind to that before he came to Paris."
"What!"
Gora's arms dropped to her sides and she stared at the floor. Then she laughed, "O God, what irony! I talked of you more or Jess as was natural … and he remembered … we had recalled the past vividly enough…. Why couldn't one of those instincts in which we are supposed to be prolific have warned me?…. Much fiction is like life! … Any heroine I could have created would have had it … had more sense…. I have botched the thing from beginning to end."
She raised her head and stared at Alexina with somber eyes; the insane light had died out of them. They took in every detail of that enhanced beauty, of that inner flame, white hot, that made Alexina glow like a transparent lamp.
She also recalled that she had watched her pack her bags … that pervenche velvet gown … Alexina had described the quaint old salon…. Her imagination, flashed out that first interview with Gathbroke with a tormenting conjuring of detail….
"Yon are one of the favorites of life," she admitted in her bitter despair. "You have been given everything—"
"I drew Mortimer," Alexina reminded her.