She drew a long breath, and threw away the cigarette she had been holding suspended in her small fingers.
"I don't know anything about them."
"Because," he hesitated, "your own life has been so happy?"
She evaded him. "Don't you think that jealousy will soon be as dead as—saying your prayers and going to church? I never meet anybody that cares enough—to be jealous."
She spoke first with passionate force, then with contempt, glancing across the room at Madeleine Alcot. Cliffe saw the look, and remembered that Mrs. Alcot's husband, a distinguished treasury official, had been for years the intimate friend of a very noble and beautiful woman, herself unhappily married. There was no scandal in the matter, though much talk. Mrs. Alcot meanwhile had her own affairs; her husband and she were apparently on friendly terms; only neither ever spoke of the other; and their relations remained a mystery.
Cliffe bent over to Kitty.
"And yet you said you could understand?—such things didn't seem strange to you."
She gave a little, reckless laugh.
"Did I? It's like the people who think they could act or sing, if they only had the chance. I choose to think I could feel. And of course I couldn't. We've lost the power. All the old, horrible, splendid things are dead and done with."
"The old passions, you mean?"