After that she was committed to silence. Every endeavour she made to draw back involved her in a new ambush, brought her to a new maze of deception. Truth became impossible.
She wanted to tell the truth. The more impossible it became, the more bitterly she wanted to tell it. She hated von Klausen. She was sure that she had never loved her husband as she loved him now. The fact that her relations with the Austrian had begun and ended with a mere declaration of love did not, in her eyes, lessen the sin; the fact that von Klausen had misunderstood her attitude and had himself assumed an attitude far below that which she had at first expected, increased her antipathy against her lover and heightened her affection—call it love as she would, it would now be no more than affection—for Jim. She wanted to tell him, but every lapsing moment laid a new stone upon the wall that barred her way.
She sat down in a chair before him and put her face in her hands.
"Jim," she said in a low voice, "I am not going to have a baby."
At first he did not understand her. He thought that the sight of blood had shaken her nerves and that she was recurring to the distaste for motherhood that she had expressed to him in Aiken.
"Don't worry, dearie," he said. "It can't be helped now, but there is really no reason for you to worry."
She did not look up, but she shook her head.
"I am not," she repeated.
He came to her, stood before her, and patted a little patch of her cheek, which her hands left bare.