'Don't I know perfectly that for years I have been one of the most beautiful women in Paris! Ask the men who have painted me for the Salon—ask that brute who might have made a fortune out of me if he hadn't been the sot he is! And what have I got by it? What do other women who are not a tenth part as good-looking as I am get by it? A comfortable life, anyway! Eh bien! essayons!—nous aussi.'
The look she flung at him choked the words on his lips.
'When I think of these ten years,' she cried, 'I just wonder at myself. There,—what you think about it I don't know, and I don't care. I might have had a good time, and I've had a devil's time. And, upon my word, I think I'll make a change!'
In her wild excitement she sprang up and began to pace the narrow room.
David watched her, fighting with himself, and with that inbred antipathy of temperament which seemed to paralyse both will and judgment. Was the secret of it that in their profound unlikeness they were yet so much alike?
Then he went up to her and made her sit down again.
'Let me have a word now,' he said quietly, though his hand as it gripped hers had a force of which he was unconscious. 'You say you wonder at yourself. Well, I can tell you this: other people have wondered too! When I left you in Paris ten years ago, I tell you frankly, I had no hopes. I said to myself—don't rage at me!—with that way of looking at things, and with such a husband, what chance is there? And for some years now, Louie, I confess to you, I have been simply humbled and amazed to see what—what'—his voice sank and shook—'love—and the fear of God—can do. It has been hard to be miserable and poor—I know that—but you have cared for Cecile, and you have feared to shut yourself out from good people who spoke to you in God's name. Don't do yourself injustice. Believe in yourself. Look back upon these years and be thankful. With all their miseries they have been a kind of victory! Will you throw them away now? But your child is growing up and will understand. And there are hands to help—mine, always—always.'
He held out his to her, smiling. He could not have analysed his own impulse—this strange impulse which had led him to bless instead of cursing. But its effect upon Louie was startling. She had looked for, perhaps in her fighting mood she had ardently desired, an outburst of condemnation, against which her mad pleasure in the sound of her own woes and hatreds might once more spend itself. And instead of blaming and reproaching he had—
She stared at him. Then with a sudden giving way, which was a matter partly of nerves and partly of surprise, she let her two arms fall upon the edge of the chair, and dropping her head upon them, burst out into wild sobbing.
His own eyes were wet. He soothed her hurriedly and incoherently, told her he would spare her all the money he could; that he and Lucy would do their best, but that she must not suppose they were very rich. He did not regard all his money as his own.