“Alan,” she said with a quick glance at him, “did you know when we began that it was going to be like this?”
“No,” he answered. “I have trifled with many women, and I was ready to trifle with you. No one had ever driven you, and I wanted to drive you. I thought I had divorced passion and love. I thought perhaps you had, too. But love is here. I am not driving you. We are being driven.”
CHAPTER VII
ALIX and Alan were in the grip of a fever that is hard to break save through satiety and ruin. They were still held apart by generations of sound tradition, but against this bulwark the full flood of modern life, as they lived it, was directed. In Alan there was a counter-strain, a tradition of passion that predisposed him to accept the easy tenets of the growing sensual cult. As he found it more and more difficult to turn his thoughts away from Alix, he strove to regain the clear-headedness that only a year before had held him back from definite moral surrender.
With her things had not gone so far. From the security of the untempted she had watched her chosen world play with fire, and only now, when temptation assailed her, did she realize the weakness that lies in every woman once her outposts have fallen and her bare heart becomes engaged in the battle.
One early morning Nance sent for Alan. He found her alone. She had been crying. He came to her where she stood by the fire, and she turned and put her arms around his neck. She tried to smile, but her lips twitched.
“Alan,” she said, “I want you to go away.”
Alan was touched. He caught her wrists and took her arms from about his neck.
“You mustn’t do that sort of thing to me, Nance. I’m not fit for it.” He made her sit down on a great sofa before the fire and sat down beside her. “You remind me to-day of the most beautiful thing I ever heard said of you—by a spiteful friend.”
“What was it?” said Nance, turning her troubled eyes to him.