Chapter 21

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_ CHAPTER XXI

It was in the days when nothing physical tainted her passionate attachment to Clive. When she was with him she enjoyed the moment with all her heart and soul--gave to it and to him everything that was best in her--all the richness of her mental and bodily vigour, all the unspoiled enthusiasm of her years, all the sturdy freshness of youth, eager, receptive, credulous, unsatiated.

With them, once more, the old happy companionship began; the Cafe Arabesque, the Regina, the theatres, the suburban restaurants knew them again. Familiar faces among the waiters welcomed them to the same tables; the same ushers guided them through familiar aisles; the same taxi drivers touched their caps with the same alacrity; the same porters bestirred themselves for tips.

Sometimes when they were not alone, they and their friends danced late at Castle House or the Sans-Souci, or the Humming-Bird, or some such resort, at that time in vogue.

Sometimes on Saturday afternoons or on Sundays and holidays they spent hours in the museums and libraries--not that Clive had either inherited or been educated to any truer appreciation of things worth while than the average New York man--but like the majority he admitted the solemnity and fearsomeness of art and letters, and his attitude toward them was as carefully respectful as it was in church.

Which first perplexed and then amused Athalie who, with no opportunities, had been born with a wholesome passion for all things beautiful of the mind.

The little she knew she had learned from books or from her companionship with Captain Dane that first summer after Clive had gone abroad. And there was nothing orthodox, nothing pedantic, nothing simulated or artificial in her likes or dislikes, her preferences or her indifference.

Yet, somehow, even without knowing, the girl instinctively gravitated toward all things good.

In modern art--with the exception of a few painters--she found little to attract her; but the magnificence of the great Venetians, the sombre splendour of the great Spaniards, the nobility of the great English and Dutch masters held her with a spell forever new. And, as for the exquisite, naively self-conscious works of Greuze, Lancret, Fragonard, Boucher, Watteau, and Nattier, she adored them with all the fresh and natural appetite of a capacity for visual pleasure unjaded.

He recognised Raphael with respect and pleasure when authority reassured him it _was_ Raphael. Also he probably knew more about the history of art than did she. Otherwise it was Athalie who led, instinctively, toward what gallery and library held as their best.

Her favourite lingering places were amid the immortal Chinese porcelains and the masterpieces of the Renaissance. And thither she frequently beguiled Clive,--not that he required any persuading to follow this young and lovely creature who ranged the full boundaries of her environment, living to the full life as it had been allotted her.

Wholesome with that charming and rounded slenderness of perfect health there yet seemed no limit to her capacity for the enjoyment of all things for which an appetite exists--pleasures, mental or physical--it did not seem to matter.

She adored walking; to exercise her body delighted her. Always she ate and drank with a relish that fascinated; she was mad about the theatre and about music:--and whatever she chanced to be doing she did with all the vigour, intelligence, and pleasure of which she was capable, throwing into it her entire heart and soul.

It led to temporary misunderstandings--particularly with the men she met--even in the small circle of friends whom she received and with whom she went about. Arthur Ensart entirely mistook her until fiercely set right one evening when alone with him; James Allys also listened to a curt but righteously impassioned discourse which he never forgot. Hargrave's gentlemanly and suavely villainous intentions, when finally comprehended, became radically modified under her coolly scornful rebuke. Welter, fat and sentimental, never was more than tiresomely saccharine; Ferris and Lyndhurst betrayed symptoms of being misunderstood, but it was a toss-up as to the degree of seriousness in their intentions.

[Illustration: "Once more, the old happy companionship began."]

The intentions of men are seldom more serious than they have to be. But they all were helplessly, hopelessly caught in the magic, gossamer web of Athalie's beauty and personal charm; and some merely kicked and buzzed and some tried to rend the frail rainbow fabric, and some struggled silently against they knew not what--themselves probably. And some, like Dane, hung motionless, enmeshed, knowing that to struggle was futile. And some, like Clive, were still lying under her jewelled feet in the very centre of the sorcery, so far silent and unstirring, awaiting to see whether the grace of God would fall upon them or the _coup-de-grace_ that ended all. Eventually, however, like all other men, Clive gave signs of life and impatience.

"_Can't_ you love me, Athalie?" he said abruptly one night, when they had returned from the theatre and he had already taken his leave--and had come back from the door to take it again more tenderly. The girl let him kiss her.

She, in her clinging, sparkling evening gown was standing by her crystal, the fingers of one hand lightly poised upon it, looking down at it.

"Love you, Clive," she repeated in smiling surprise. "Why, I do, you dear, foolish boy. I've admitted it to you. Also haven't you just kissed me?"

"I know.... But I mean--couldn't you love me above all other men--above everything in this world--"

"But I _do_! Were you annoyed because I was silly with Cecil to-night?"

"No.... I understand. You simply can't help turning everybody's head. It's in you,--it's part of you--"

"I'm merely having a good time," she protested. "It means no more than you see, when I flirt with other men.... It never goes any farther--except--once or twice I have let men kiss me.... Only two or three.... Before you came back, of course--"

"I didn't know that," he said sullenly.

"Didn't you? Then the men were more decent than I supposed.... Yes, I let John Lyndhurst kiss me once. And Francis Hargrave did it.... And Jim Allys tried to, against my wishes--but he never attempted it after that."

She had been looking down again at the crystal while speaking; her attitude was penitential, but the faint smile on her lips adorably mischievous. Presently she glanced up at him to see how he was taking it. He must have been taking it very badly, for:

"Clive!" she said, startled; "are you really annoyed with me?"

The gathering scowl faded and he forced a smile. Then the frown returned; he flung one arm around her supple waist and gathered both her hands into his, holding them closely imprisoned.

"You _must_ love!" he said almost roughly.

"My dear! I've told you that I do love you."

"And I tell you you don't! Your calm and cheerful friendship for me isn't love!"

"Oh. What else is it, please?"

He kissed her on the mouth. She suffered his lips again without flinching, then drew back laughingly to avoid him.

"Why are you becoming so very demonstrative?" she asked. "If you are not careful it will become a horrid habit with you."

"Does it mean nothing more than a habit to you?" he asked, unsmilingly.

"It means that I care enough for you to let you do it more than once, doesn't it?"

He shrugged and turned his face toward the window:

"And you believe that you love me," he said, sullenly and partly to himself.

"You amazingly sulky man, _what_ are you muttering to yourself?" she demanded, bending forward and across his shoulder to see his face which was still turned from her. He swung about and caught her fiercely in his arms; and the embrace left her breathless and flushed.

"Clive--please--"

"_Can't_ you care for me! For God's sake show it if you can!"

"Please, dear--I--"

"_Can't_ you!" he repeated unsteadily, drawing her closer. "You know what I am asking. Answer me!"

She bent her head and rested it against his shoulder a moment, considering; she then looked away from him, troubled:

"I don't want to be your--mistress," she said. Truth disconcerts the vast majority. It disconcerted him--after a ringing silence through which the beating of rain on the window came to him like the steady tattoo of his own heart.

"I did not ask that," he said, very red.

"You meant that.... Because I've been everything to you except that."

"I want you for my wife," he interrupted sharply.

"But you are married, Clive. So what more can I be to you, unless I become--what I don't want to become--"

"I merely want you to love me--until I can find some way out of this hell on earth I'm living in!"

"Dear, I'm sorry! I'm sorry you are so unhappy. But you can't get free,--can you? She won't let you, will she?"

"I've got to have my freedom! I can't stand this. Good God! Must a man do life for being a fool once? Isn't there any allowance to be made for a first offence? I've always wanted to marry you. I was a miserable, crazy coward to do what I did! Haven't I paid for it? Do you know what I've been through?"

She said very sweetly and pitifully: "Dear, I know what people suffer--what lonely hearts endure. I think I understand what you have been through."

"I know you understand! Fool that I am who enlightened you. But yours was the injury of bruised faith--the suffering caused by outrage. No hell of self-contempt set _you_ crawling about the world in agony; no despicable self-knowledge drove _you_ out into the waste places. Yours was the sorrow of a self-respecting victim; mine the grief of the damned fool who has done to death all that he ever loved for the love of expediency and of self!"

"Clive!--"

"That's what I am!" he interrupted fiercely, "a damned fool! I don't know what else I am, but I can't live without you, and I won't!"

She said: "You told me that being in love with me would not make you unhappy. So I told you to love me. I was wrong to let you do it."

"You darling! I am more than happy!"

"It was a dreadful mistake, Clive! I shouldn't have let you."

"Do you think you could have stopped me?"

"I don't know. Couldn't I? I've stopped other men.... I shouldn't have let you. But it was so delightful--to be really loved by _you_! All my pride responded. It seemed to dignify everything; it seemed to make me really a woman, with a place among other women--to be loved by such a man as you ... and I was _not_ selfish about it; I did ask you whether it would make you unhappy to be in love with me. Oh, I see now that I was very wrong, Clive--very foolish, very wrong! Because it _is_ making you restless and unhappy--"

"If you could only love me a little in return!"

"I don't know how to love you except the way I am doing--"

"There is a more vital emotion--"

"It seems impossible that I could care for you more deeply than I do."

"If you could only respond with a little tenderness--"

"I _do_ respond--as well as I know how," she said piteously.

He drew her nearer and touched her cheek with his lips:

"I know, dear. I don't mean to complain."

"Oh, Clive! I have let you fall in love with me and it is making you miserable! And now it's making me miserable, too, because you are disappointed in me."

"No--"

"You are! I'm not what you expected--not what you wanted--"

"You are everything I want!--if I could only wake your heart!" he said in a low tense voice.

"It isn't my heart that is asleep.... I know what you miss in me.... And I can't help it. I--I don't wish to help it--or to be different."

She dropped her head against his shoulder. After a few moments she spoke from there in a muffled, childish voice:

"What can I do about it? I don't want to be your mistress, Clive.... I never wanted to do--anything--like that."

A deeper colour burnt his face. He said: "Could you love me enough to marry me if I managed to free myself?"

"I have never thought of marrying you, Clive. It isn't that I couldn't love you--that way. I suppose I could. Probably I could. Only--I don't know anything about it--"

"Let me try to free myself, anyway."

"How is it possible?"

He said, exasperated: "Do you suppose I can endure this sort of existence forever?"

The swift tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't know--I don't know," she faltered. "I thought this existence of ours ideal. I thought you were going to be happy; I supposed that our being together again would bring happiness to us both. It doesn't! It is making us wretched. You are not contented with our friendship!" She turned on him passionately: "I don't wish to be your mistress. I don't want you to make me wish to be. No girl naturally desires less than she is entitled to, or more than the law permits--unless some man teaches her to wish for it. Don't make such a girl of me, Clive! You--you are beginning to do it. And I don't wish it! Truly I don't!"

In that fierce flash of candour,--of guiltless passion, she had revealed herself. Never, until that moment, had he supposed himself so absolutely dominant, invested with such power for good or evil. That he could sway her one way or the other through her pure loyalty, devotion, and sympathy he had not understood.

To do him justice he desired no such responsibility. He had meant to be honest and generous and unselfish even when the outlook seemed most hopeless,--when he was convinced that he had no chance of freedom.

But a man with the girl he loves in his arms might as well set a net to catch the wind as to set boundaries to his desires. Perhaps he could not so ardently have desired his freedom to marry her had he not as ardently desired her love.

Love he had of her, but it was an affection utterly innocent of passion. He knew it; she realised it; realised too that the capacity for passion was in her. And had asked him not awaken her to it, instinctively recoiling from it. Generous, unsullied, proudly ignorant, she desired to remain so. Yet knew her peril; and candidly revealed it to him in the most honest appeal ever made to him.

For if the girl herself suspected and dreaded whither her loyalty and deep devotion to him might lead her, he had realised very suddenly what his leadership meant in such a companionship.

Now it sobered him, awed him,--and chilled him a trifle.

Himself, his own love for her, his own passion he could control and in a measure subdue. But, once awakened, could he control such an ally as she might be to his own lesser, impatient and hot-headed self?

Where her disposition was to deny, he could still fetter self and acquiesce. But he began to understand that half his strength lay in her unwillingness; half of their safety in her inexperience, her undisturbed tranquillity, her aloofness from physical emotion and her ignorance of the mastery of the lesser passions.

The girl had builded wholesomely and wisely for herself. Instinct had led her truly and well as far as that tangled moment in her life. Instinct still would lead her safely if she were let alone,--instinct and the intelligence she herself had developed. For the ethical view of the question remained only as a vague memory of precepts mechanical and meaningless to a healthy child. She had lost her mother too early to have understood the casual morals so gently inculcated. And nobody else had told her anything.

Also intelligence is often a foe to instinct. She might, with little persuasion accept an unconventional view of life; with a little emotional awakening she might more easily still be persuaded to a logic builded on false foundations. Add to these her ardent devotion to this man, and her deep and tender concern lest he be unhappy, and Athalie's chances for remaining her own mistress were slim enough.

Something of this Clive seemed to understand; and the understanding left him very serious and silent where he stood in the soft glow of the lamp with this young girl in his arms and her warm, sweet head on his breast.

He said after a long silence: "You are right, Athalie. It is better, safer, not to respond to me. I'm just in love with you and I want to marry you--that's all. I shall not be unhappy about it. I am not, now. If I marry you, you'll fall in love, too, in your own way. That will be as it should be. I could desire no more than that. I _do_ desire nothing more."

He looked down at her, smiled, releasing her gently. But she clung to him for a moment.

"You are so wonderful, Clive--so dear! I _do_ love you. I will marry you if I can. I want to make up everything to you--the lonely years, your deep unhappiness--even," she added shyly, "your little disappointment in me--"

"You don't understand, Athalie. I am not disappointed--"

"I _do_ understand. And I am thinking of what will happen if you fail to free yourself.... Because I realize now that I don't propose to leave you to grow old all alone.... I shall live with you when you're old whatever people may think. I tell you, Clive, I'm the same child, the same girl that you once knew, only grown into a woman. I know right from wrong. I had rather not do wrong. But if I've got to--I won't whimper. And I'll do it thoroughly!"

"You won't do it at all," he said, smiling at her threat to the little tin gods.

"I don't know. If they won't give you your freedom, and if--"

"Nonsense, Athalie," he said, laughing, coolly master of himself once more. "We mustn't be unwholesomely romantic, you and I. I'll marry you if I can; if I can't, God help us, that's all."

But she had become very grave: "God help us," she repeated slowly. "Because I believe that, rightly or wrongly, I shall one day belong to you."

He said: "It can be only in one way. The right way." Perhaps he had awakened too late to a realisation of his power over her, for the girl made no response, no longer even looked at him.

"Only one way," he repeated, uneasily;--"the right way, Athalie."

But into her dark blue eyes had come a vague and brooding beauty which he had never before seen. In it was tenderness, and a new wisdom, alas! and a faint and shadowy something, profound, starlike, inscrutable.

"As for love," he said, forcing a lighter tone, "there are fifty-seven different varieties, Athalie; and only one is poisonous,--unless taken with the other fifty-six, and in small doses."

She smiled faintly and walked to the window. Rain beat there in the darkness spattering the little iron balcony. Below, the bleared lights of the city stretched away to the sky-line.

He followed, and slipped his arm through hers; and she bent her wrist, interlacing her slim fingers with his.

"You know," he said, "that when I often speak with apparent authority I am wrong. In the final analysis _you_ are the real leader, Athalie. Your instincts are the right ones; your convictions honest, your conclusions just. Mine are too often confused with selfishness and indecision. For mine is an irresolute character;--or it was. I'm trying to make it firmer."

She pressed his hand lightly, her eyes still fixed on the light-smeared darkness.

He went on more gravely: "Candour and the intuition born of common sense,--that is where you are so admirable, dear. Add to that the tenderest heart that ever beat, and a proud ignorance of the lesser, baser emotions--and, who am I to interfere,--to come into the sweet order of your life with demands that confuse you--with complaints against the very destiny I brought upon us both--with the clamour of a selfish and ignoble philosophy which your every instinct rejects, and which your heart entertains only because it _is_ your heart, and its heavenly sympathy has never failed me yet.... Oh, Athalie, Athalie, it would be a shameful day for me and a bitter day for you if my selfishness and irresolution ever swerved you. What I have lost--if I have indeed lost it--is lost irrevocably. And I've got to learn to face it."

She said, still gazing absently into the darkness: "Yes. But I am just beginning to wonder what it is that _I_ may have lost,--what it is that I have never known."

"Don't think of it! Don't permit anything I have said or done to trouble you or stir you toward such an awakening.... I don't want to stand charged with that. You are tranquil, now--"

"I--_was_."

"You are still!" he said in quick concern. "Listen, Athalie--the majority of men lose their grip at moments; men as irresolute as I lose it oftener. Don't waste sympathy on me; it was nothing but a whine born of a lesser impulse--born of emotions less decent than you could comprehend--"

"Maybe I am beginning to comprehend."

"You shall not! You shall remain as you are! Dear, don't you realise that I can't steady myself unless I can look up to you? You've raised yourself to where you stand; you've made your own pedestal. Look down at me from it; don't ever _step_ down; don't ever condescend; don't ever let me think you mortal. You are not, now. Don't ever descend entirely to my level--even if we marry."

She turned, smiling too wisely, yet adorably: "What endless romance there is in that boy's heart of yours! There always was,--when you came running back to me where I stood alone by the closed door,--when you found me living as all women who work live, and made a beautiful home for me and gave me more than I wished to take, asking nothing of me in return. Oh, Clive, you were chivalrous and romantic, too, when you listened to your mother's wishes and gave me up. I understand it so much better, now. I know how it was--with your father dead and your beautiful mother, broken, desolate, confiding to your keeping all her hope and pride and future happiness,--all the traditions of the family, and its dignity and honour!

"In the light of a clearer knowledge, do you suppose I blame you now? Do you suppose I blame you for anything?--for your long and broken-hearted and bitter silence?--for the quick resurgence of your affection for me--for your love--Oh, Clive!--for your passion?

"Do you suppose I think less of you because you love me--care for me in the many and inexplicable ways that a man cares for a woman?--because you want me as a man wants the woman he loves, as his wife if it may be so, as his _own_, anyhow?"

She let her eyes rest on him in a new and fearless comprehension, tender, curious, sad by turns.

"It is the romance of passion in you that has been fighting to awaken the Sleeping Princess of a legend," she said with a slight smile; "it is the same illogical, impulsive romance that draws back just as her closed lids tremble, fearing to awaken her to the sorrows and temptations of a world which, after all, God made for us to wake in."

"Athalie! I am a scoundrel if I have--"

"Oh, Clive!" she laughed, mocking the solemn measure of her own words; "adorable boy of impulse and romance, never to outgrow its magic armour, destined always to be ruled by dreams through the sweetest and most generous of hearts, you need not fear for me. I am already awake--at least I am sufficiently aroused to understand you--and something, too, of my own self which I have never hitherto understood."

For a second, lightly, she rested her warm, fresh cheek against his. When it was burning she disengaged her fingers from his and leaned aside against the rain-swept window.

"You see?" she said calmly but with heightened colour.... "I am very human after all.... But it is still my mind that rules, not my emotions."

She turned to him in her old sweetly humorous and mocking manner:

"That is all the romance of which I am capable, Clive--if there be any real romance in a very clear mind. For it is my intellect that must lead me to salvation or to destruction. If I am to come crashing down at your feet, I shall have already planned the fall. If I am to be destroyed, it will not be by any accident of romantic emotion, of unconsidered impulse, or sudden blindness of passion; it will be because my intelligence coolly courted destruction, and accepted every chance, every hazard."

So spoke Athalie, smiling, in the full confidence and pride of her superb youth, certain of the mind's autocracy over matter, lightly defying within herself the latent tempest, of which she as yet divined no more than the first exquisitely disturbing breeze;--deriding, too, the as yet unloosened bolts of the old gods themselves,--the white lightning of desire.

"Come," she said, half mockingly, half seriously, passing her arm through Clive's;--"we are quite safe together in this safe and sane old world--unless _I_ choose--otherwise."

She turned and touched her lips lightly to his hair:

"So you may safely behave as irrationally, irresponsibly, and romantically as you choose.... As long as I now am wide awake."

And then, for the first time, he realised his utter responsibility to this girl who so gaily and audaciously relieved him of it. And he understood how pitifully unarmed she really stood, and how imminent the necessity for him to forge for himself the armour of character, and to wear it eternally for his own safety as well as hers.

"Good night, dear," he said.

In her new and magnificent self-confidence she turned and put both arms around his neck, drawing his lips against hers.

But after he had gone she leaned against the closed door, less confident, her heart beating too fast and hard to entirely justify this new enfranchisement of the body, or her overwhelming faith in its wise and trusted guardian, the mind.

And he went soberly on his way through the rain to his hotel, troubled but determined upon his new role as his own soul's armourer. All that was in him of romance and of chivalry was responding passionately to the girl's unconscious revelation of her new need.

For now he realised that her boasted armour was of gauze; he could see her naked heart beating behind it; he beheld, through the shield she lifted on high to protect them both, the moon shining with its false, reflected light.

Never did Athalie stand in such dire need of the armour she supposed that she was wearing.

And he must put on his own, rapidly, and rivet it fast--the inflexible mail of character which alone can shield such souls as his--and hers.

* * * * *

When he came into his own room, a thick letter from his wife lay on the table. Before he broke the seal he laid aside his wet garments, being in no haste to read any more of the now incessant reproaches and complaints with which Winifred had recently deluged him.

[Illustration: "Finally ... he cut the envelope and seated himself beside the lamp."]

Finally, when he was ready, he cut the envelope and seated himself beside the lamp. She wrote from the house in Kent:

"It was a very different matter when you were travelling about and I could say that you were off on another exploring expedition. But your return from South America was mentioned in the London papers; and the fact that you are now not only in New York but that you have also gone into business there is known and is the subject of comment.

"I shall be, as usual, perfectly frank with you; I do not care whether you are here or not; in fact I infinitely prefer your absence to your presence. But your engaging in business in New York is a very different matter, and creates a different situation for me.

"You like to travel. Why don't you do it? I don't care to be the subject of gossip; and I shall be--am, no doubt, already,--because you are making the situation too plain and too public.

"It's well enough for one's friends to surmise the condition of affairs; no unpleasantness for me results. But let it once become newspaper gossip and my situation among people I most earnestly desire to cultivate would become instantly precarious and perhaps impossible.

"It is not necessary for me to inform you what is the very insecure status of an American woman here, particularly in view of the Court's well known state of mind concerning marital irregularities.

"The King's views coincide with the Queen's. And the Queen's are perfectly well known.

"If you continue your exploring expeditions, which you evidently like to engage in, and if you report here at intervals for the sake of appearances, I can get on very well and very comfortably. But if you settle in New York and engage in business there, and continue to remain away from this country where you are popularly supposed to maintain residences in town and country, I shall certainly begin to experience very disagreeably the consequences of your selfish conduct.

"Your reply to my last letter has thoroughly incensed me.

"You always have been selfish. From the time I had the misfortune to marry you I had to suffer from your selfish, self-centred, demonstrative, and rather common character--until you finally learned that demonstration is offensive to decent breeding, and that, although I happened to be married to you, I intended to keep to my own notions of delicacy, reserve, privacy, and self-respect.

"Of course you thought it a sufficient reason for us to have children merely because _you_ once thought you wanted them; and I shall not forget what was your brutal attitude toward me when I told you very plainly that I refused to be saddled with the nasty, grubby little brats. Evidently you are incapable of understanding any woman who is not half animal.

"I did not desire children, and that ought to have been sufficient for you. I am not demonstrative toward anybody; I leave that custom to my servants. And is it any crime if the things that interest and appeal to you do not happen to attract me?

"And I'll tell you now that your subjects of conversation always bored me. I make no pretences; I frankly do not care for what you so smugly designate as 'the things of the mind' and 'things worth while.' I am no hypocrite: I like well bred, well dressed people; I like what they do and say and think. Their characters may be negative as you say, but their poise and freedom from demonstration are most agreeable to me.

"You politely designated them as fools, and what they said you characterised as piffle. You had the exceedingly bad taste to sneer at various members of an ancient and established aristocracy--people who by inheritance from generations of social authority, require no toleration from such a man as you.

"These are the people who are my friends; among whom I enjoy an established position. This position you now threaten by coolly going into business in New York. In other and uglier words you advertise to the world that you have abandoned your home and wife.

"Of course I cannot help it if you insist on doing this common and disgraceful thing.

"And I suppose, considering the reigning family's attitude toward divorce, that you believe me to be at your mercy.

"Permit me to inform you that I am not. If, in a certain set, wherein I now have the entree, divorce is not tolerated,--at any rate where the divorced wife of an American would not be received,--nevertheless there are other sets as desirable, perhaps even more desirable, and which enjoy a prestige as weighty.

"And I'll tell you now that in case you persist in affronting me by remaining in business in New York, I shall be forced to procure a separation--possibly a divorce. And I shall not suffer for it socially as no doubt you think I will.

"There is only one reason why I have not done so already--disinclination to be disturbed in a social milieu which suits me. It's merely the inconvenience of a transfer to another equally agreeable set.

"But if your selfish conduct forces me to make the change, don't doubt for one minute, my friend, that I'm entirely capable and able to accomplish it without any detriment or anything worse than some slight inconvenience to myself.

"Whether it be a separation or a divorce I have not yet made up my mind.

"There is only one reason why I should hesitate and that is the thought that possibly you might be glad of your freedom. If I were sure of that I'd punish you by asking for a separation. But I do not suppose it really matters to you. I think I know you well enough to know that you have no desire to marry again. And, as for the young woman in whose company you made yourself notorious before we were engaged--well, I think you would hesitate to offer her marriage, or even, perhaps, the not unprecedented privilege of being your _chere amie_. I do you the honour of believing you too fastidious to select a public fortune teller for your mistress, or to parade a cheap trance-medium as a specimen of your personal taste in pulchritude.

"Meanwhile your attitude in domestic matters continues to annoy me. Be good enough to let me know, definitely, what you propose to do, so that I may take proper measures to protect myself--because I have always been obliged to protect myself from you and your vulgar notions ever since my mother and yours made a fool of me.

"WINIFRED STUART BAILEY."

With his care-worn eyes still fixed on the written pages he rested his elbow on the table and dropped his head on his hand, heavily.

Rain swept the windows; the wind also was rising; his room seemed to be full of sounds; even the clock which had a subdued tick and a most discreet manner of announcing the passing of time, seemed noisy to him.

"God! what a mess I've made of life," he said aloud. For a moment a swift anger burned fiercely against the woman who had written him; then the flame of it blew against himself, scorching him with the wrath of self-contempt.

"Hell!" he said between his teeth. "It isn't the fault of that little girl across the ocean. It's my fault, mine, and the fault of nobody else."

Indecision, the weakness of a heart easily appealed to, the irresolution of a man who was not man enough to guard and maintain his own freedom of action and the right to live his own life--these had encompassed the wrecking of him.

It seemed that he was at least man enough to admit it, generous enough to concede it, even if perhaps it was not altogether true.

But never once had he permitted himself, even for a second, to censure the part played by his mother in the catastrophe. That he had been persuaded, swerved, over-ridden, dominated, was his own fault.

The boy had been appealed to, subtly, cleverly, on his most vulnerable side; he had been bothered and badgered and beset. Two women, clever and hard as nails, had made up their minds to the marriage; the third remained passive, indifferent, but acquiescent. Wiser, firmer, and more experienced men than Clive had surrendered earlier. Only the memory of Athalie held him at all;--some vague, indefinite hope may have remained that somehow, somewhere, sometime, either the world's attitude might change or he might develop the courage to ignore it and to seek his happiness where it lay and let the world howl.

That is probably all that held him at all. And after a while the constant pressure snapped that thread. This was the result.

* * * * *

He lifted his head and stared, heavy-eyed, at his wife's letter. Then, dropping the sheets to the floor he turned and laid both arms upon the table and buried his face in them.

Toward morning his servant discovered him there, asleep. _

Read next: Chapter 22

Read previous: Chapter 20

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