“Well, it’s what I was always expected to do. I’ve thought a good deal about what you said the last time I was here. You were partly right. I suppose I have sulked. Well, I’m not going to sulk any more. Eric isn’t a demi-god. I know now there’s no earthly reason why I should look up to him, and admire him. He’s just like any other man.”
“But I could have told you that any time these last eight years!” cried Madame Claire, more puzzled than amused. “And besides, you yourself seem to have been well acquainted with his failings. I have sometimes thought you saw nothing else.”
“That’s because I was annoyed by his perfections.”
“Perfections! My dear, I could swear Eric has never been a prig!”
“Well, he never seemed to make mistakes like other people. And he always seemed to expect things of me that I wasn’t capable of. It got on my nerves.”
“He always made me feel I was disappointing him. And that isn’t very pleasant. But now,” said Louise, coming to the crux of the matter, “he has disappointed me. So we are quits at last.”
“Ah,” said Madame Claire, still in the dark. “That must be a relief.”
“Oddly enough, it is a relief. Horrible as the whole thing is, I—I could almost be glad of it.”
“I was wrong,” thought Madame Claire, remembering a conversation she had had with Judy. “Eric is interested in some other woman, at last.”