‘Is it? She seems to let you take charge. Julian, does she love him?’
He was silent for a moment before answering: ‘I think she does.’ He put his hand to his head and said suddenly, very low: ‘O God, it’s awful! You know I quarreled with him—Charlie—over that marriage. I never saw him after it—we were never reconciled. But after the child was born, she wrote and told me he had said in his last letter to her that if anything happened to him he would like me to be the child’s guardian.... So I suppose he forgave me.’
‘Of course, of course, Julian,’ she said, half-weeping at the look of his bowed head.
Was this the canker that gnawed Julian,—interminable thought of Charlie dead like that, without a reconciling word?
‘I blame only myself,’ he said, still in the low voice. ‘She has been very good. Never a word of—anything. Always that sweet empty unresentful way,—like a child. Sometimes I think she never knew—or never understood, anyway. I think she can’t understand that sort of thing. It’s a sort of insensitiveness. She might hate me over Peter, but she doesn’t seem to. Why doesn’t she?’
The expression she had surprised on Mariella’s face came back to her, still undecipherable.
‘I almost wish she would,’ he went on. ‘I wish I was certain she was jealous or even critical of me. I haven’t the least idea where I am.’ He rubbed his eyes and forehead wearily. ‘It’s odd how her presence affects me. She gets on my nerves to a degree! Nothing but this sweet blank passivity.... You know I like people with spikes and facets, people who thrust back when I thrust, brilliant, quick glittering people. And I like people who are slow and deep and warm; and I think you’re one of that sort, Judy. But what is she? Sometimes I think she’s watching me intently but I don’t know where from, and it makes me irritable. She’s got quality, you know,—incredible physical and moral courage. I think that must have been what Charlie loved in her. But cold, cold and flat—to me.’
He sighed and shivered.
‘Oh, Julian, you’re very tired, aren’t you? There’s nothing to worry about. You’ve got things on your mind because you’re so tired. Does your head ache?’
‘Yes. No.... I’m in a bad mood, Judith. You’d better leave me.’ But he spoke gently and raised his face to smile at her. It was then she saw that he had been crying.