She was greatly thrilled and quite untouched. It was a pleasant little game, and she held all the winning cards. So she said, very softly:
“We mustn't go on like this, you know. We mustn't spoil things.”
And by her very “we” let him understand that the plight was not his but theirs. They were to suffer on, she implied, in a mutual, unacknowledged passion. He flushed deeply.
But although he was profoundly affected, his infatuation was as spurious as her pretense of one. He was a dilettante in love, as he was in art. His aesthetic sense, which would have died of an honest passion, fattened on the very hopelessness of his beginning an affair with Natalie. Confronted just then with the privilege of marrying her, he would have drawn back in dismay.
Since no such privilege was to be his, however, he found a deep satisfaction in considering himself hopelessly in love with her. He was profoundly sorry for himself. He saw himself a tragic figure, hopeless and wretched. He longed for the unattainable; he held up empty hands to the stars, and by so mimicking the gesture of youth, he regained youth.
“You won't cut me out of your life, Natalie?” he asked wistfully.
And Natalie, who would not have sacrificed this new thrill for anything real in the world, replied:
“It would be better, wouldn't it?”
There was real earnestness in his voice when he spoke. He had dramatized himself by that time.
“Don't take away the only thing that makes life worth living, dear!”