“Therefore it takes the softness out of the generous action it is allied to⸺”
“No. It takes its raison d’être away altogether. It leaves it merely a stupid and unnecessary fact. It cancels the generosity, but leaves the fact—your marriage.”
“But the fact itself is altered by that!”
“In what way? You are now married to Bertha⸺”
“Yes, but what does that mean? I married Bertha this afternoon, and here I am punctually and as usual with you this evening⸺”
“But the fact of your having married Bertha this afternoon will prevent your making any one else your wife in the future. Supposing I had a child by you—not by Kreisler—it would be impossible to legitimatize him. The thing is of no importance in itself. But you have given Kreisler’s child what you should have kept for your own! What’s the good of giving your sex over into the hands of a swanky expert, as you describe it, if you continue to act on your own initiative? I throw up my job. Garçon, l’addition!”
But a move to the café opposite satisfied her as a demonstration. Tarr was sure of her, and remained passive. She extorted a promise from him: to conduct no more obscure diplomacies in the future.
Bertha and Tarr took a flat in the Boulevard Port Royal, not far from the Jardin des Plantes. They gave a party to which Fräulein Lipmann and a good many other people came. He maintained the rule of four to seven, roughly, for Bertha, with the utmost punctiliousness. Anastasya and Bertha did not meet.
Bertha’s child came, and absorbed her energies for upwards of a year. It bore some resemblance to Tarr. Tarr’s afternoon visits became less frequent. He lived now publicly with his illicit and splendid bride.
Two years after the birth of the child, Bertha divorced Tarr. She then married an eye-doctor, and lived with a brooding severity in his company and that of her only child.