“I have only spoken the truth, Claudia,” he replied in the same low, calm tone as he had before used. Their eyes met. She knew that he read her soul; she knew that he had not lied.
She—now become keenly critical, scornfully indifferent, and very difficult to impress—was struck as she had never been before by the authority, the dignity, the pure accent of his voice, and his steady, thorough manliness.
He stood gazing down at her with a look under which her dark eyes sank. There was a sternness in his words that moved her with a sense almost of fear. The greatness, the singularity, the mystery of this life, that had so long been interwoven with her own, bewildered her; she could not fully comprehend these qualities.
Little by little she had been drawn away from him, till between them scarcely a bond remained. As he fixed his eyes upon her lovely face, it occurred to him to wonder whether, after all, he would have been so selfishly in error, so blind a traveller in the mists of passion, if he had kept her in his own hands, under his own law and love? Would he not have made her happiness far purer, her future safer, because nearer God, than they now were, brilliant, imperious, pampered, exquisite creature though she had become? She was great, she was lovely, she was popular, she entertained princes, she was unrivalled; but where was that “divine nature” with which he had once, in the bygone days, believed her to be dowered? Where was it now?
“Your words are cruel, Dudley! That you should speak like this! My God! Tell me that you don’t mean it!” she cried suddenly, after a long silence, restless beneath the fixed and melancholy look which she could not meet.
“Listen, Claudia,” he said, still quite calmly, standing erect with his back to the fire. “What I have just said I have long wanted to say, but have always put it off for fear of hurting your feelings—for fear of reproaching you for what is mainly my own folly.”
“But you have reproached me!” she cried in a hard voice. “You tell me this with such a nonchalant air that it has at last awakened me to the bitter truth—you don’t love me!”
“I have spoken as much for your own good as for mine,” he answered. “We must end this folly, Claudia—we—”
“Folly! You call my love folly!” she exclaimed, starting forward. Life had been so fair with her. The years had gone by in one continual blaze of triumph. She was the smart Lady Richard Nevill, whose name was on everybody’s tongue; she was satiated with offers of love. And yet this man had coldly exposed to her the naked truth. Intoxicated with homage, indulgence, extravagance and pleasure, her conscience had become stifled and her memory killed; her heart scarcely knew how to beat without the throbs of vanity or triumph. So she had lived her life in freedom—absolute freedom. Vague rumours had been whispered in the boudoirs of Berkeley Square and Grosvenor Gardens concerning her, but with the sceptre of her matchless loveliness and the skill of a born tactician, she cleared all obstacles, overruled all opponents, bore down all hesitations, and silenced all sneers. “Folly?—you call my love folly, Dudley?”
“We have both been foolish, Claudia—very foolish,” he answered, facing her and looking gravely into her dark eyes, in which shone the light of unshed tears. “People are talking, and we must end our folly.”