“Raymond has told me that there are certain things you fail to understand—I have no wish whatever to discuss them.” The Marquise had gone toward the door; with her hand on it she paused to add: “I shall say nothing whatever of what has happened.”
Her icy magnanimity added the last touch to Undine’s wrath. They knew her extremity, one and all, and it did not move them. At most, they would join in concealing it like a blot on their honour. And the menace grew and mounted, and not a hand was stretched to help her….
Hardly a half-hour earlier Moffatt, with whom she had been visiting a “private view,” had sent her home in his motor with the excuse that he must hurry back to the Nouveau Luxe to meet his stenographer and sign a batch of letters for the New York mail. It was therefore probable that he was still at home—that she should find him if she hastened there at once. An overwhelming desire to cry out her wrath and wretchedness brought her to her feet and sent her down to hail a passing cab. As it whirled her through the bright streets powdered with amber sunlight her brain throbbed with confused intentions. She did not think of Moffatt as a power she could use, but simply as some one who knew her and understood her grievance. It was essential to her at that moment to be told that she was right and that every one opposed to her was wrong.
At the hotel she asked his number and was carried up in the lift. On the landing she paused a moment, disconcerted—it had occurred to her that he might not be alone. But she walked on quickly, found the number and knocked…. Moffatt opened the door, and she glanced beyond him and saw that the big bright sitting-room was empty.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed, surprised; and as he stood aside to let her enter she saw him draw out his watch and glance at it surreptitiously. He was expecting someone, or he had an engagement elsewhere—something claimed him from which she was excluded. The thought flushed her with sudden resolution. She knew now what she had come for—to keep him from every one else, to keep him for herself alone.
“Don’t send me away!” she said, and laid her hand on his beseechingly.
XLV
She advanced into the room and slowly looked about her. The big vulgar writing-table wreathed in bronze was heaped with letters and papers. Among them stood a lapis bowl in a Renaissance mounting of enamel and a vase of Phenician glass that was like a bit of rainbow caught in cobwebs. On a table against the window a little Greek marble lifted its pure lines. On every side some rare and sensitive object seemed to be shrinking back from the false colours and crude contours of the hotel furniture. There were no books in the room, but the florid console under the mirror was stacked with old numbers of Town Talk and the New York Radiator. Undine recalled the dingy hall-room that Moffatt had lodged in at Mrs. Flynn’s, over Hober’s livery stable, and her heart beat at the signs of his altered state. When her eyes came back to him their lids were moist.
“Don’t send me away,” she repeated. He looked at her and smiled. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know—but I had to come. To-day, when you spoke again of sailing, I felt as if I couldn’t stand it.” She lifted her eyes and looked in his profoundly.
He reddened a little under her gaze, but she could detect no softening or confusion in the shrewd steady glance he gave her back.
“Things going wrong again—is that the trouble?” he merely asked with a comforting inflexion.
“They always are wrong; it’s all been an awful mistake. But I shouldn’t care if you were here and I could see you sometimes. You’re so STRONG: that’s what I feel about you, Elmer. I was the only one to feel it that time they all turned against you out at Apex…. Do you remember the afternoon I met you down on Main Street, and we walked out together to the Park? I knew then that you were stronger than any of them….”
She had never spoken more sincerely. For the moment all thought of self-interest was in abeyance, and she felt again, as she had felt that day, the instinctive yearning of her nature to be one with his. Something in her voice must have attested it, for she saw a change in his face.
“You’re not the beauty you were,” he said irrelevantly; “but you’re a lot more fetching.”
The oddly qualified praise made her laugh with mingled pleasure and annoyance.
“I suppose I must be dreadfully changed—”
“You’re all right!—But I’ve got to go back home,” he broke off abruptly. “I’ve put it off too long.”
She paled and looked away, helpless in her sudden disappointment. “I knew you’d say that…. And I shall just be left here….” She sat down on the sofa near which they had been standing, and two tears formed on her lashes and fell.
Moffatt sat down beside her, and both were silent. She had never seen him at a loss before. She made no attempt to draw nearer, or to use any of the arts of cajolery; but presently she said, without rising: “I saw you look at your watch when I came in. I suppose somebody else is waiting for you.”
“It don’t matter.”
“Some other woman?”
“It don’t matter.”
“I’ve wondered so often—but of course I’ve got no right to ask.” She stood up slowly, understanding that he meant to let her go.
“Just tell me one thing—did you never miss me?”
“Oh, damnably!” he brought out with sudden bitterness.
She came nearer, sinking her voice to a low whisper. “It’s the only time I ever really cared—all through!”
He had risen too, and they stood intensely gazing at each other. Moffatt’s face was fixed and grave, as she had seen it in hours she now found herself rapidly reliving.
“I believe you DID,” he said.
“Oh, Elmer—if I’d known—if I’d only known!”
He made no answer, and she turned away, touching with an unconscious hand the edge of the lapis bowl among his papers.
