“I wouldn’t have lied about it. I must have someone to whom I can talk openly. Oh, I’m so unhappy!”
These words also she said with so expressionless a countenance that an onlooker out of earshot would have been persuaded she spoke of most trivial things.
“I did my best,” she went on, “I bore it for a month. Then I couldn’t do without him any longer. I feel like a woman in one of those old stories, under some love-spell so that no power of hers could help her. I suppose you’ll say I’m a fool, but I think Isolde or Phèdre must have had just that same sensation. I haven’t any will and I haven’t any courage, and the worst is that the whole thing’s so absolutely degrading. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t despise me, because I utterly despise myself. And Heaven knows what’ll be the end of it; I feel that something awful will happen. Some day or other Paul is certain to find out, and then it means ruin, and I shall have thrown away everything for such a miserable, poor-spirited cur.”
“Don’t talk so loud,” said Miss Ley, for the other had slightly raised her voice. “D’you think he’d marry you?”
“No; he’s often told me he wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t marry him now; I know him too well. Oh, I wish I’d never seen him. He doesn’t care two straws for me; he knows I’m in his power, and he treats me as if I were a woman off the streets. I’ve been so bitterly punished.”
Her eyes wandered across the room, and she saw Reggie talking to Mrs. Murray.
“Look at him,” she said to Miss Ley. “Even now I would give my soul for him to take me in his arms and kiss me. I wouldn’t mind the danger, I wouldn’t mind the shame, if he only loved me.”
Self-possessed and handsome, immaculately attired, Reggie chatted with the ease of a man of forty; his dark, lustrous eyes fixed on Mrs. Murray, his red lips smiling sensually, indicated plainly enough that her beauty attracted him, Mrs. Castillyon watched the pair with jealous rage and with agony.
“She’s got every chance,” she muttered; “she’s a widow, and she’s rich, and she’s younger than I am. But I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy the wretchedness of falling in love with that man.”
“But, good heavens! why don’t you pull yourself together? Have you given up all thought of breaking with him?”