“I mean what you might have deduced with an effort. What are you but a philanderer in little things where Alan is in great? What have you ever done to hold me or any other woman? I respected you once for what you were going to be. That has died. Did you think I was going to make you into a man?”
Gerry stood, breathing hard, a great despondency in his heart. Alix went on pitilessly:
“What have you become? A monumental time-server on the world, and you are surprised that a worker reaches the prize that you can not attain! ‘All things come to him who waits.’ That’s a trite saying; but how about this? There are lots of things that come to him who only waits that he could do without. The trouble with you is that you have built your life altogether on traditions. It is a tradition that your women are faithful; so you need not exert yourself to holding yours. It is a tradition that you can do no wrong; so you need not exert yourself to doing anything at all. You are playing with ghosts, Gerry. Your party was over a generation ago.”
Alix had calmed down. There was still time for Gerry to choke her to good effect. The hour could yet be his. But he did not know it. Smarting under the lash of Alix’s tongue, he made a final and disastrous false step.
“You try to humiliate me by placing me back to back with Alan?” he said, with his new-born sneer. Alix appraised it with calm eyes, and found it rather attractive. “Well, let me tell you that Alan is so small a man that if I dropped out of the world to-day, he’d sail for Africa to-morrow and think for the rest of his life of his escape from you as a close shave.”
Alix sprang to her feet. She was trembling. Gerry felt a throb of exultation. It was his turn to wound.
“What do you mean?” said Alix, very quietly; but it was the quiet of suppressed passion at white heat.
“I mean that Alan is the kind of man who finds other men’s wives an economy. He would take everything you have that’s worth taking, but not you.”
Alix’s eyes blazed at him from her white face. “Please go away,” she said. He started to speak. “Please go away,” she repeated. Her lips were quivering, and her face twitched in a way that was terrifying to Gerry. He hurried out, repeating to himself over and over: “You have made Alix cry. You have made Alix cry.”