“That’s what I asked.”
“No! Emphatically no! How could I? But—but he reminds me of his mother, and that can’t be endured.”
“Was that the reason of your leaving him with the de Salvières when you went to China?”
He saw the pit yawning before his feet, and felt too dazed to jump back from the brink.
“No—that is ... yes! Oh, I don’t know, Marguerite! Don’t ask me!”
“You are terribly changed, Basil,” she said, sadly. “I have long known—by intuition, for I was never told so—that your marriage had been an unhappy one; but for you, a man like you” (the tone was emphatic) “to make your child pay for this, to deprive him of a father’s love and refuse even to see him for an hour, is iniquitous. I am sorry to speak so rudely to you, Basil, but I cannot help it.”
“You are not rude,” he contradicted. “What you say is from your point of view right and fair, but—appearances are against me, whether justly or unjustly, I can’t say. God! Do you think that I have not fought against that—feeling which estranges me from Piotr? I have sweated blood and water; I have....”
With sudden alarm Marguerite swerved toward him and with one small hand on his sleeve stared blankly at him.
“Are you crazy, Basil, to talk like this?” she asked. “Estranged from your own flesh and blood, your own little son, the dearest, sweetest little chap that ever was? Shame on you, I say, for letting yourself go as you do, for acting in a hysterical way unworthy of even the weakest woman!”
Her cheeks pink, her eyes sparkling with excitement, she was a revelation as she drew back from him in downright anger. Never had he imagined her to be capable of such a transformation.