'I did?' she repeated with amusement. 'You mean Loswa did; or you, perhaps——'
He grew red with anger.
'I do not like such jests.'
'Oh, my dear, you like no jests! You are a knight of doleful countenance and take everything au pied de la lettre. If you had had a little amourette with a fisher-girl it would argue bad taste perhaps, but it would not surprise me, except as a fault in taste.'
'Nor would it matter to you,' he said bitterly; 'you have given me my liberty so very often that, with the usual obstinate ingratitude of human nature, I could have wished you less kind—and less indifferent.'
'All the same, are you sure you have never taken advantage of my kindness?' she said with amusement. 'If not, you must be the ideal husband of that bourgeois par excellence, Dumas fils. But it is a quarter-past four. Au revoir.'
He opened the door for her in silence, and in silence escorted her through the house to her carriage, and bowed low as it rolled away.
His heart was bitter against her. He had been at once disappointed and relieved at the failure of his effort. Damaris was not even a recollection to her; she had caused the uprooting of the child's whole life, but she thought no more about it than a person strolling through green fields thinks of some field flower which he has plucked up, carried a moment in listless fingers, then flung away. Her own life was humbly touched by so many supplicants whom she passed, not seeing them, so many whose eyes were fastened on her in envy and in wonder, that a poor little barbarian who had been under her roof one brief evening could occupy no cell of her memory. If he told her the whole story she would only laugh; call him probably Scipio or Galahad. She would be sure to say something which would wound him; she would be sure to receive his narrative with a cruel smile of doubt if not of derision.
'Time will tell her as much as she will ever care to know,' he thought with the procrastination natural to a hesitating temper. Time would tell her, if ever her forgotten Desclée should become one of those on whom the fierce light of the world's fame beat; whilst if the life of Damaris should pass away in failure, in obscurity, in the paths of privacy, what would it ever be to her? No more than the rain which fell, or the dust which blew, in some dreary by-street which her own graceful steps never approached. She had no pity for failure, no sympathy with impotence; the unsuccessful were to her eyes the born crétins of the world.
He paused on the terrace of the house as her carriage rolled on its noiseless tires through the courtyard and out of the great gilded gates.