'Blackmail? Oh, no.'
'Don't you mind people blackmailing you?'
'If people are made like that.'
'Ah!' Verschoyle gave an indescribable gurgle of impatience. 'Look here, Mann, do try to realise the position. You can't get rid of this woman whatever she does because you have treated marriage as though you could take a wife as if it were no more than buying a packet of cigarettes.'
'I have never thought of Clara as my wife.'
'How then?'
'As Clara,' said Charles simply. 'She is a very great artist.'
Verschoyle was baffled, but Clara forgave Charles all his folly for the sake of his simplicity. It was true. The mistake was hers. What he said was unalterably true. She was Clara Day, an artist, and he had loved her as such. As woman he had not loved her or any other.... What in the ordinary world passed for love simply did not exist for him at all.
She turned to Verschoyle.
'Please do what you can for us,' she said. 'And Charles, please don't try to think of it in anybody else's way but your own. I won't let them send you to prison. They don't want to do that. They would much rather have you great and powerful so as to bleed you....'