"But—"
Mrs. Shiffney looked at him, and he sat down. At that moment he remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have won her over to my side now. I have power. She always felt it. She feels it now more than ever." And abruptly he said:
"You are on Sennier's side. And really it is a sort of battle here. The two managements have turned it into a battle. We've been talking all this evening of music. Do you really wish me to succeed? I think—" he paused. He was on the edge of accusing her of treachery at Constantine. But he decided not to do so, and continued, "What I mean is, do you genuinely care whether I succeed or not?"
After a minute Mrs. Shiffney said:
"Perhaps I care even more than Charmian does."
Her large and intelligent eyes were still fixed upon Claude. She looked absolutely self-possessed, yet as if she were feeling something strongly, and meant him to be aware of that. And she believed that just then it depended upon Claude whether she cared for his success or desired his failure. His long resistance to her influence, followed by this partial yielding to it, had begun to irritate her capricious nature intensely. And this irritation, if prolonged, might give birth in her either to a really violent passion, of the burning straw species, for Claude, or to an active hatred of him. At this moment she knew this.
"Perhaps I care too much!" she said.
And instantly, as at Constantine, when the reality of her nature deliberately made itself apparent, with intention calling to him, Claude felt the invincible recoil within him, the backward movement of his true self. The spurious vanity of the male died within him. The feverish pleasure in proving his power died. And all that was left for the moment was the dominant sense of honor, of what he owed to Charmian. Mrs. Shiffney would have called this "the shriek of the Puritan." It was certainly the cry of the real man in Claude. And he had to heed it. But he loathed himself at this moment. And he felt that he had given Mrs. Shiffney the right to hate him for ever.
"My weakness is my curse!" he thought. "It makes me utterly contemptible. I must slay it!"
Desperation seized him. Abruptly he got up.