As so often lately, this was not the moment for a man to advance his suit, but Jack could not decide whether Barbara, like all the girls in these restless, neurotic months, was too much excited to be serious or whether she was deliberately tantalizing him and deferring surrender to set a higher value on herself. As secretly as he had learned dancing, he set himself to master the leads and returns of bridge. Starting with "Auction for Beginners," he proceeded painfully to "Advanced Auction Bridge," and challenged his parents and sister to an experimental game during his next week-end at Red Roofs. The experiment was not repeated; Colonel Waring, who carried into bridge the formalism and irritability of a whist-racked youth, told him that he did not seem to have a "card head," and, after a night of helpless anger against the unreasonableness of women, Jack launched his ultimatum to Barbara with an indignant resolve that she should not trifle with him any longer.
There was little enough of the love-letter in his few words and colourless phrasing, but Barbara felt a tremor as she read them. The letter awaited her, with others, when she came home after a party; she read it first, then poured herself a cup of cocoa, then read the others and came back to it. This, then, was his capitulation to a woman of such ill-repute that he dared not confess to his own parents that he even knew her.
"My dear Jack," she wrote in reply. "Yes, I shall be there on Friday and look forward to seeing you."
It read naturally, but gave her hypercritical mind the sense that she was meeting him half-way; she would not let him say that his broadest hint had been a warning.
"My dear Jack," she tried again. "I've promised faithfully to go to the Marlings on Friday; there's rather a panic there, because poor dear Lady M. thinks that every one will desert her for Ross House—it's her own fault for choosing that night. If I can possibly get away, I shall look in for a few minutes. If not, we shall meet at the Abbey next day. Of course, we're expecting you then."
Though this read even more naturally, Barbara was not wholly satisfied. She left the letter in the hall, then retrieved and carried it into her bedroom to see how it looked by morning light. As she undressed, she saw with surprise that there was an unaccustomed flush on either cheek and that her lips were tightly compressed. Jack had hurt her even more than she appreciated; and he was now going to be taught his lesson. The "haggard Venus".... The sight of her thin face and deep-set, glowing eyes made her feel a tragic actress in spite of herself. She was word-perfect in the scene, for she had rehearsed it every time that his bluff, sweeping condemnation had touched her vanity. No doubt he would still try to be bluff and off-hand, but she was resolved to make him plead humbly and to take back every reproach, one by one.
Barbara sat down before an open window in her bedroom; outside, the silent night was like a hushed and darkened auditorium for her speech.
"But we've nothing in common! You know you hate the life I had. I'm afraid I can't alter it, Jack. You'd take away all my friends, but they interest me; I've got music and books and pictures in common with them. Even if you got over your dislike, you'd hate to sit in a corner while we talked about the things that do mean everything to me. And I'm afraid I should always be shocking you. I've told you that I must have every new experience; I'd sooner be dead than live a sort of half-life, afraid to do this, afraid to do that—just because no one had done it before. I've got too much vitality.... Jack, you've seen eagles in captivity? Well! That's what would happen to me if I couldn't spread my wings and soar, soar, soar.... If I married any one who didn't soar with me. You wouldn't like to hear people say, 'She's grown so old and lifeless since she married.'
"I can't make out how you ever came to fall in love with me, thinking of me as you do. There are hundreds of girls just as pretty—much prettier, in fact. Sally Farwell. Sonia Dainton. I'm vain and I'm not going to pretend that I don't think myself much higher than them, but it's the things which put me higher that you'll never appreciate—never, never, never! You think they're wrong or cheap or vulgar.... Jack, you're in love at present, you're not seeing clearly; but you know in the bottom of your heart that you'll never change me. Well! Do you want to spend the rest of your life with a woman you despise, do you want to despise the mother of your children?... Yes, you actually used the word—it hurt me so much that I'm not likely to forget it—but, if you like, I'll try to forget it, I'll say I forget it.... Of course, I forgive! My dear, this is much too important for us both to have any silly little personal feeling.... And, whenever you say I'm 'big,' I hope it means that I've got a big soul, that I'm generous.... Dear, I'm not asking you to apologize, but you admit you said that I was vulgar? And now you say it's untrue? Well, I haven't changed? It's love.... But love doesn't last for ever. To be happily married, you want common sympathies, common tastes—something that will last for ever, when love's burnt out.