“He loves me, too. And I love him still, in spite of the way he’s treated me. He’s the only man I ever really loved. Do you think I’m going off and hide in a hole, while she spends his money and plays the princess up and down the Avenue? Not much!”
I fell silent. Should I set out upon another effort at “moulding water”? Should I give Claire one more scolding—tell her, perhaps, how her very features were becoming hard and ugly, as a result of the feelings she was harbouring? Should I recall the pretences of generosity and dignity she had made when we first met? I might have attempted this—but something held me back. After all, the one person who could decide this issue was Douglas van Tuiver.
I rose. “Well, I have to be going. But I’ll drop round now and then, and see what success you have.”
She became suddenly important. “Maybe I won’t tell!”
To which I answered, indifferently, “All right, it’s your secret.” But I went off without much worry over that part of it. Claire must have some one to whom to recount her troubles—or her triumphs, as the case might be.
29. I had my talk with Sylvia a day or two later, and made my excuse—a friend from the West who had been going out of town in a few hours later.
The seed had been growing, I found. Ever since we had last met, her life had consisted of arguments over the costume-ball on which her husband had set his heart, and at which she had refused to play the hostess.
“Of course, he’s right about one thing,” she remarked. “We can’t stay in New York unless we give some big affair. Everyone expects it, and there is no explanation except one he could not offer.”
“I’ve made a big breach in your life, Sylvia,” I said.
“It wasn’t all you. This unhappiness has been in me—it’s been like a boil, and you’ve been the poultice.” (She had four younger brothers and sisters, so these domestic similes came naturally.)