“Fran, Fran!”
“Now don’t play the injured and astonished small boy! You have no complaint. You’ve never known me. You’ve never known anything about me. You’ve never known what I wore, what flowers I put in your study, what sacrifices I made to cover up your awkwardnesses and help you keep your dull friends and your dull work and your dull reputation!”
“Fran!”
“Oh, I know! I’m being beastly. But I was so happy with Kurt—till two minutes ago. And then I find you here, a prowling elephant—oh yes, the great Mr. Dodsworth, the motor magnate, who has a right to commandeer my soul and my dreams and my body! I can’t stand it! Poor—yes, Kurt and I will be poor. Only, thank God, we’ll have my twenty thousand a year! But that will be poverty among the sort of people he knows—”
She was altogether hysterical; she was tearing at her evening frock; and he was as appalled as a man witnessing a murder. He said timidly, “All right, dear. Just one thing. Does he want to marry you?”
“Yes!”
“Then I’ll go away.” He had a vision of such loneliness as he had known in Paris at the Select. “Can you get a divorce here in Germany?”
“Yes. I believe so. Kurt says so.”
“You’ll stay in Berlin?”
“I think so. A friend of the Biedners has a nice flat to let, overlooking the Tiergarten.”
“All right. Then I’ll go away. Tomorrow. ’Fraid it’s too late tonight. I’ll sleep on the couch here in the parlor, if you don’t mind.”
“Very well. … Oh, you would play the role of the patient, suffering martyr at a time like this! You have just enough native instinct to guess that’s the one way you can put me hopelessly in the wrong, and make me feel as if I’d been a dirty dog in not appreciating you—as if I must go back and be the dutiful dull consort. Well, I won’t! Understand that!” He felt as though he were being driven into a corner. “Kurt has everything I’ve always wanted—real culture, learning, manners, even his dear, idiotic, babyish clownishness. Yes—I’ll hurry and get it in before you graciously throw it up at me—yes and position. I admit I’d like to be a countess. Though how unimportant that part is, a man like you could never understand. Yes, and physically Kurt has—oh, he hasn’t your lumbering bull strength, but he rides, he fences, he dances, he swims, he plays tennis—oh, perfectly. And he has a sense of romance. But you’ll go around telling all the dear dull people in Zenith that I didn’t appreciate your sterling—”
“Stop it! I warn you!”
“—virtues, and that I’m a silly tuft-hunting American woman, and you’ll enjoy sneering that for all his rank, the Count Obersdorf is only a clerk and probably a fortune-hunter, and that will make you feel so justified for all your dullness! Oh, I can see what a sweet time you’ll have spreading scandal about me—”
“God!” Fran shrank at something in his face. He was standing by the center table. He had cooled his huge right hand by grasping a vase of roses. That hand slowly closed now, his shoulder strained, and the vase smashed, the water dripped through his fingers. He threw the mess, glass fragments and crushed flowers, into a corner, and wiped his bleeding fingers. The hysterical gesture relieved him.
She looked frightened, but she quavered gallantly, “Don’t be mel—”
He broke in with a very hard, businesslike: “We’ll have no more melodrama on either side. I warned you that I’d fly off the handle. If you enjoy your little game of picking at me any more, it won’t be a vase next time. Now there’s just a couple of things to settle. That I go is decided. But—You’re quite sure that Kurt wants to marry you?”
“Quite!”
“Been anything more than—”
“No, not yet—I’m sorry to say! There might have been if you hadn’t come tonight. Oh, I’m sorry! Please! I don’t mean to be quite as nasty as I sound! But I’m a little hysterical, too. Don’t you suppose I know what people will think about me—what even Brent and Emily will think! Oh, I’ll pay—”
“You will. Now will you promise me: see as much as you want to of Kurt, but promise me that you’ll wait a month before you decide to sue for divorce. To be sure.”
“Very well.”
“I’ll instruct my bank to send you ten thousand a year, on top of your own money. That seems to end everything.”
“Oh, Sam, if I could only make you see that it was your ignorance, your impotence, and not my fault—”
Suddenly he had seized an astonished and ruffled Fran, thrust her into the bedroom, growled, “We’ve talked enough tonight,” locked the door on her infuriated protests … berated himself for that ruffianism … sighed that he would lie awake all night … and, with no bedtime preparations save removing his coat and shoes, dropped on the couch and gone instantly and blindly asleep.
XXIX
In the morning he was cool, determined to clear off as soon as possible. She was no less cool. When he unlocked the bedroom door, at eight, she was already dressed, in crisp blue coat and skirt and plain blouse, and she looked at him as though he were a servant whom she had resolved to discharge for insolence. She said quietly:
“Good morning. You know, of course, that your mauling me and threatening me last evening made finally impossible any rapprochement between us.”
“Eh? That’s fine.”
“Oh. Oh, I see. Very well, that makes everything so much easier. At last we know where we are. Now I suppose you’ll return to Paris, at least for a while.”
“I suppose so. I’ll take the evening train.”
“Then you’ll have a lot to do. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m afraid we’ll have to make a number of agreements—about our house in Zenith, about finances, and so on—it’s very generous of you to
