Fanny, here, would have been equally fascinated and shocked; but, essentially, she'd be hurt; and, at the same time, rebellious with the innate resentment of the pure, the contained, for the free. She would never have agreed to the champagne, either; they would have ordered lemonades or claret cup; and, by midnight, gone back to the hotel. It was now past two o'clock. There was no lessening in the vigor of the dancing, the laughter, or in the stream of laden trays; no trace of fatigue in Mrs. Grove. She had the determined resilience of a woman approaching, perhaps, the decline, but not yet in it; of one who had danced into innumerable sun-rises from the night before, destroying many dozens of pairs of satin slippers.
When it occurred to her to gather up the petal-like folds of her cloak, get her hands into the gloves rolled back on her wrists, it was nearer three than two. A hollow voice on the street called the number of the Grove automobile, the door closed smoothly on them, and again she was absorbed into the cushions and her wrap. But there was a change in his feeling for her, an indefinable but potent boundary had been crossed: they had looked together, informally, at life, at passion, and the resulting sympathy had, finally, put aside the merely casual. Lee lighted a cigarette, and, without speech, she took it from him, transferred it to her own lips.
Eastlake and Fanny, Helena and Gregory, seemed very remote; a quality of his being suppressed at home here possessed him completely: in a black silk evening waistcoat, with no responsibilities, no thought of time or work, he was, lightly and wholly, an idler in a polite sphere. The orchids in their glass holder, dimly visible before him, were a symbol of his purely decorative engagement with life. Now Lee couldn't reconcile himself to the knowledge that this was no more than an interlude—with music—in his other, married existence. It was as unsubstantial as an evening's performance, in temporary finery, of a high comedy of manners.
Savina Grove said, “It has been surprisingly nice.”
“Hasn't it,” he agreed; “and, when you spoke, I was trying to realize that it will be so soon over.”
Immediately after he cursed himself for a blunder, a stupid error in emphasis, from which she drew perceptibly away. She extinguished the cigarette, his cigarette, and that, as well, added to the distance between them.
“I should go back to Eastlake tomorrow afternoon,” he observed, in a manner which he made entirely detached. To that she objected that he would not see Mina Raff, nothing would be accomplished. “She might have dinner with you tomorrow night,” she thought; “Mina gets back to the Plaza a little before seven. But we can call the studio.”
In view of what he had already done, Mrs. Grove's proposal seemed unavoidably reasonable. He would telephone Fanny again in the morning and explain. Fanny, his wife! Well, he continued, as though he were angrily retorting to a criticism from without, no man ever better realized the splendid qualities of his wife. That was beyond contradiction; and he sharply added that not Fanny, but the role of a wife, a housewife, was under observation. Mrs. Grove was married, but that didn't keep her from the Malmaison, at what Eastlake disapprovingly called all hours of the night. She had no aspect of a servitude which, while it promised the most unlimited future rewards, took the present grace, the charm, from women. That—the consequent loss or gain—was open to question; but the fact remained: for the majority of women marriage was fatal to their persons. Only the rich, the fortunate and the unamenable escaped.
“In a very few minutes now,” Mrs. Grove said, “you will be able to sleep.”
“I've never been wider awake,” he protested; “I was thinking of how marriage submerged most women while you escaped.”