“In about a week, I believe. Don’t you think it is the best thing I can do?”
“Oh, Alexis, if you are happy, what more can I ask?” Her brimming eyes touched him to the quick.
“Little Claire, what a gentle thing you are. Far too dear for an egotistical brute like me.” He touched her gloved hand, and gazed down at her stormily. He noted with surprise that she was looking almost pretty. Her hat was actually becoming, and the long earrings lent her an elfin charm. What had she been doing to herself? Was the pathetic desire to attract him at the root of the change? The tragedy of it! Was it possible that he had ever possessed this girl, of whose body he retained scarcely a recollection? The very thought seemed incestuous. She was not a woman but a sister. The little Claire of nursery days, the older Claire of flushed cheeks and timid ardors, yes, her image was still vivid, and even dear, so intermingled with her companionship were his earliest recollections. But Claire, the wife of a few hectic months, the submissive puppet of rare and intermittent contacts, was unthinkable. She had existed only within the hideous confines of his disordered brain.
His silence, his gaze filled Claire with horrible confusion. She blushed crimson. Within the hurricane of his glance her soul shivered, exposed, naked. What blasting thought, what ignoble memory lurked behind those stormy eyes? Shame seared her as with a hot iron. Yet her surrender had been as pure as it had been entire. Was she not Alexis’ wife? Bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh? Did not she carry within her body his seed? With a heroic effort, she raised her head and their eyes clashed.
“What are you thinking of?” she inquired with a quiet hauteur, which surprised him.
His answer skirted the truth warily.
“That you should never have married me, Claire. We shall never be happy together. It was all a horrible mistake. Let us undo it, dear.”
“I cannot divorce you, if that is what you mean.” Her hands were clasped convulsively upon each other.
“But, Claire, we do not love each other. I—I——” he faltered.
“Yes, I know, you love another woman. You don’t have to tell me that, Alexis.” Her smile was grim.