She bent her head and kissed him on the forehead.
“Dudley,” she finished mischievously, “what are you going to give Lorraine for a wedding-present?”
“I might buy her the book, ‘How to be Happy though Married,’” he said dilly, “or write her a new one and call it ‘Words of Warning for Wifey.’”
“We’ll give her something together,” Hal exclaimed triumphantly, knowing that, as usual, she had won the day.
Then she went off to bed, feigning a light-heartedness she was far from feeling, and dreading, with vague misgivings, what the future might bring forth.
CHAPTER V
It was a little over two years later that the crash came. There was first a commonplace, sordid tale of bickering and quarrelling, with passionate jealousy on the part of the middle-aged husband, and callous, maddening indifference on the part of the now successful and brilliant actress.
To do Lorraine justice, she was not actively at fault. Her sense of fair play made her try sincerely to make the best of what had all along been an inevitable fiasco. She did not sin in deed against the man to whom she had sold herself, but in thought it was hardly possible for her to give him anything but tolerance, or to feel much beyond the callous indifference she purposely cultivated, to make their life together endurable. The things that at first only irritated her grew almost unbearable afterwards.
Lorraine’s father had been a gentleman by birth, breeding, and nature. If she inherited from her mother an ambitious, calculating spirit, she also inherited from her father refinement, and tone, and a certain fineness character, that showed itself chiefly in unorthodox ways, for the simple reason that her life and conditions were entirely removed from a conventional atmosphere.
As a man she might merely have lived a double life, conforming to the conventions when advisable, and following her own ambitions and bent in secret, without ever apparently stepping over the line.