She tried to reach him and put a hand on his arm, but he stepped aside. To him, as he looked at her now, she was the antithesis of anything he could brook, let alone desire artistically or physically. The charm was gone, the spell broken. It was another type, another point of view he required, but, above all and principally, youth, youth—the spirit, for instance, that was in Berenice Fleming. He was sorry—in his way. He felt sympathy, but it was like the tinkling of a far-off sheep-bell—the moaning of a whistling buoy heard over the thrash of night-black waves on a stormy sea.
“You don’t understand how it is, Aileen,” he said. “I can’t help myself. My love is dead. It is gone. I can’t recall it. I can’t feel it. I wish I could, but I can’t; you must understand that. Some things are possible and some are not.”
He looked at her, but with no relenting. Aileen, for her part, saw in his eyes nothing, as she believed, save cold philosophic logic—the man of business, the thinker, the bargainer, the plotter. At the thought of the adamantine character of his soul, which could thus definitely close its gates on her forever and ever, she became wild, angry, feverish—not quite sane.
“Oh, don’t say that!” she pleaded, foolishly. “Please don’t. Please don’t say that. It might come back a little if—if—you would only believe in it. Don’t you see how I feel? Don’t you see how it is?”
She dropped to her knees and clasped him about the waist. “Oh, Frank! Oh, Frank! Oh, Frank!” she began to call, crying. “I can’t stand it! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I shall die.”
“Don’t give way like that, Aileen,” he pleaded. “It doesn’t do any good. I can’t lie to myself. I don’t want to lie to you. Life is too short. Facts are facts. If I could say and believe that I loved you I would say so now, but I can’t. I don’t love you. Why should I say that I do?”
In the content of Aileen’s nature was a portion that was purely histrionic, a portion that was childish—petted and spoiled—a portion that was sheer unreason, and a portion that was splendid emotion—deep, dark, involved. At this statement of Cowperwood’s which seemed to throw her back on herself forever and ever to be alone, she first pleaded willingness to compromise—to share. She had not fought Stephanie Platow, she had not fought Florence Cochrane, nor Cecily Haguenin, nor Mrs. Hand, nor, indeed, anybody after Rita, and she would fight no more. She had not spied on him in connection with Berenice—she had accidentally met them. True, she had gone with other men, but? Berenice was beautiful, she admitted it, but so was she in her way still—a little, still. Couldn’t he find a place for her yet in his life? Wasn’t there room for both?
At this expression of humiliation and defeat Cowperwood was sad, sick, almost nauseated. How could one argue? How make her understand?
“I wish it were possible, Aileen,” he concluded, finally and heavily, “but it isn’t.”
All at once she arose, her eyes red but dry.
“You don’t love me, then, at all, do you? Not a bit?”
“No, Aileen, I don’t. I don’t mean by that that I dislike you. I don’t mean to say that you aren’t interesting in your way as a woman and that I don’t sympathize with you. I do. But I don’t love you any more. I can’t. The thing I used to feel I can’t feel any more.”
She paused for a moment, uncertain how to take this, the while she whitened, grew more tense, more spiritual than she had been in many a day. Now she felt desperate, angry, sick, but like the scorpion that ringed by fire can turn only on itself. What a hell life was, she told herself. How it slipped away and left one aging, horribly alone! Love was nothing, faith nothing—nothing, nothing!
A fine light of conviction, intensity, intention lit her eye for the moment. “Very well, then,” she said, coolly, tensely. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll not live this way. I’ll not live beyond tonight. I want to die, anyhow, and I will.”
It was by no means a cry, this last, but a calm statement. It should prove her love. To Cowperwood it seemed unreal, bravado, a momentary rage intended to frighten him. She turned and walked up the grand staircase, which was near—a splendid piece of marble and bronze fifteen feet wide, with marble nereids for newel-posts, and dancing figures worked into the stone. She went into her room quite calmly and took up a steel paper-cutter of dagger design—a knife with a handle of bronze and a point of great sharpness. Coming out and going along the balcony over the court of orchids, where Cowperwood still was seated, she entered the sunrise room with its pool of water, its birds, its benches, its vines. Locking the door, she sat down and then, suddenly baring an arm, jabbed a vein—ripped it for inches—and sat there to bleed. Now she would see whether she could die, whether he would let her.
Uncertain, astonished, not able to believe that she could be so rash, not believing that her feeling could be so great, Cowperwood still remained where she had left him wondering. He had not been so greatly moved—the tantrums of women were common—and yet—Could she really be contemplating death? How could she? How ridiculous! Life was so strange, so mad. But this was Aileen who had just made
