“Nothing ... only don’t quote poetry; it makes everything seem so unreal.”
“Unreal?” He caught her to him passionately. “Is this unreal? Don’t you believe in my love?”
She let her head droop on his shoulder. “Men have such large hearts—or such small ones. Don’t look so hurt, dear.... It’s true. Men love and unlove so much more easily than women.” But her lips smiled and took the sting out of her words. The lips said, “I want to believe,” while the worldly, cynical words flowed over them. “What is fire to-day, Frank, is ashes to-morrow.”
“You don’t believe that love can last?”
His eyes shone, and he made a most convincing lover. His voice had the right ring. She could feel the pulsating warmth of his hand through the thin ninon of her sleeve. “Claudia, you mean everything to me—everything. I hardly dared to hope, and yet I had to, just as a ship-wrecked sailor has to dream of land or he would die. I have worked hard because I wanted to be worthy of your praise, of your confidence. You have inspired everything I have done. All the time I have been striving to please you.”
It was balm to her, it was food for her heart’s hunger. He had worked hard at his profession but to please her, to lay his success as an offering at her feet—art, not for art’s sake, but for love’s. That was the right romantic spirit, a little exalté, a little extravagant; but then, he was an artist, and had not innumerable artists owed their lives’ inspiration to women? She was glad she had been able to help him, to introduce him into a circle that had started the ball of success a-rolling for him. She had been able to give and he had appreciated the giving, for love always seeks self-immolation, and Claudia had nothing of the vampire in her composition. Love! Did she love him? Was it not inevitable after her first experience that she should be a little uncertain of her own feelings?
“I hoped, I prayed you would turn to me one day.... He doesn’t appreciate you. He takes your beauty and your sweetness as his right. Everyone sees it.”
She was a little startled. So she and Gilbert’s marital relations were being discussed just like other couples’ in their set. Gilbert’s coldness and neglect were being talked about over the teacups of Mayfair. Her pride revolted against it, and her half-formed determination to console herself like the other women she knew hardened. Something that had been pricking her a little ceased to do so. She would take the sweets offered her. After all, life soon ended—in a tombstone. An epigram she had heard a few days previously recurred to her mind: “Let every woman see to it that she has a present, so that the future may not find her unprovided with a past.” Who cared about either her morals or her ethics? She had only herself to reckon with. Herself! Well, she would consider that another time.
“We won’t discuss him.... Never. You understand, Frank?”
He had read the sudden tumult of her thoughts.