Only such dolorous delights as two lovers on the verge of separation can have. Suspect delights that doubt poisoned. Either of them divined the secret designs of the other, and even as their lips met either knew that the other, for all their love, was acting as if they were at daggers drawn.
“I love you! I love you!” Ralph reiterated desperately while his inmost thought was how to find means of snatching Bridget’s mother from the talons of his mistress.
Sometimes they gripped one another with the violence of two creatures veritably battling with one another. There was a brutality in their caresses, a threat in their eyes, hate in their hearts, and despair in their tenderness. One would have said that they were watching one another to discover the weak point at which to strike with the deadliest effect.
One night Ralph awoke with a sensation of extreme discomfort to find Josephine at his bedside, with a lamp in her hand, looking down on him. He shivered. Not that her charming face wore other than its usual smiling expression. But why did that smile seem to him so wicked and so cruel?
“What’s the matter? What do you want?” he said sharply.
“Nothing—nothing,” she said in careless accents, and she left him.
But she came back presently to show him a photograph.
“I found this in your pocket-book,” she said. “I could hardly believe that you carried about with you another woman’s photograph. Who is it?”
It was the photograph of Clarice d’Etigues. He hesitated, then said: “I don’t know. It’s a photo I picked up.”
“Come: don’t lie!” she said brusquely. “It’s Clarice d’Etigues. Do you suppose I’ve never seen her? You were in love with her.”