The man arose and stood in the doorway.
“Don’t say that,” he said very quietly. “Not yet. I won’t begin, now, after all these years to make protestations of love. The thing called Love we’ve discussed too often already, 160 and without result. Anyway, that’s not the point. We never pretended to be lovers, even when we were married. We were simply useful, very useful to each other.”
Camilla started to interrupt him, but, preventing, he held up his hand.
“We talked over a certain possibility––one now a reality––before we were married.” He caught the look upon her face. “I don’t say it was ideal. It simply was,” he digressed slowly in answer, then hurried on: “That was only five years ago, Eleanor, and we were far from young.” He looked at her, searchingly. “You’ve not forgotten the contract we drew up, that stood above the marriage obligation, above everything, supreme law for you and me?” Instinctively his hand went to an inner pocket, where the rustle of a paper answered his touch. “Remember; it’s not a favor I ask of you, but the fulfilment of your own word. Think a moment before you say you’ll never return.”
Camilla Maurice found an answer very difficult. Had he been angry, or abusive, it would have been easy; but as it was–– 161
“You overlook the fact of change. A lifetime isn’t required for that.”
“I overlook nothing.” The man went back to his chair. “You remember, as well as I, that we considered the problem of change––and laughed at it. I repeat, we’re no longer in swaddling clothes.”
“Be that as it may, I tell you the whole world looks different to me now.” The speaker struggled bravely, but the ghastliness of such a discussion wore on her nerves, and her face twitched. “No power on earth could make me keep that contract since I’ve changed.”
The suggestion of a smile played about the man’s mouth.
“You’ve succeeded, perhaps, in finding that for which we searched so long in vain, an æsthetic, non-corporeal love?”