“It’s better for married people. They get on better.”
He returned hotly — “None of us have been alone when we were first married. Not Eden and Alayne. Not Piers and Pheasant. Not Alayne and me.”
She gave a little laugh. “Well, have the lot of you always got on?”
“My Uncle Nicholas and his wife were alone together and they got to hate each other.”
“I have another reason.”
Something in her voice made him try to see her face. “What is it, Clara?” he asked.
“I feel that it is not safe for me to be near you.”
“You need not be afraid of me.”
“You have shown me that. But I can’t trust myself. I must take my hateful self away.”
His voice broke out harshly. “Clara, I need you! I can’t let you go away! I want you near me!” He put his uninjured arm about her and drew her to him so that their breasts were together. She did not answer but, with supreme effort, tried to draw every particle of bliss possible from his embrace for her solace later. Yet she did not falter in her resolve.
Pauline had retreated to the top of the path but had not yet returned to the house when she heard Renny’s voice raised in what, in the extreme stillness of that place, amounted almost to an outcry. She stood transfixed in an ecstasy of jealousy. She was not the only person who had overheard his excited words. He stood in the singular position at that moment of a man who holds in his arms a woman who loves him, while two other women who love him, stand as listeners unseen and unable to see the principal actors in the drama.
Having seen Renny go toward the ravine, Alayne had a sudden desire to follow him there. She had last seen the stream frozen and the bridge arched in snow. She would stand on it with him and listen to the talking of the stream. A passionate tenderness toward life stirred her emotionally. She felt the largeness and strength of the springtime renewal. A heaviness, as though her own body partook in it, caused her to move slowly. She made no sound as she opened the wicket gate and stood at the top of the descent into the ravine.
When she heard his outburst of “Clara, I need you! I want you near me! I can’t let you go away!” — she did not stop in her slow descent but moved forward, as though by a power other than her own. The path seemed to flow under her feet and yet she was able to move steadily. It was her brain that felt as though it were falling, in a dizzy flight down into the darkness. All the while she had a hard pride in the thought that she could walk so steadily after hearing words like these. She planted one foot after the other among the curled green heads of the bracken fronds. She carried her electric torch in her hand, unlighted, but, when she reached the bridge, she turned on its beam and pointed it, as though it were a weapon, at the two who had drawn apart in consternation.
She flashed the light across Renny’s rigid features then turned it full into Clara’s face that showed, not so much shame and mortification, as sullen resentment. Her light-lashed eyes blinked, but she stared at Alayne’s black figure and said curtly:
“This is just a goodbye you’ve interrupted, Mrs. Whiteoak. There’s nothing to be melodramatic about.”
Alayne answered in a voice she scarcely recognized as her own — “Let it be a goodbye! Let it be a goodbye!”
“Renny will explain.”
“I ask for no explanation,” answered Alayne bitterly, as though she threw their secret unopened in their teeth.
Clara turned from the bridge and began quickly to mount the path toward the wood where Pauline listened. She felt no surprise when she found her still there. She gave her shadowy figure one glance, then passed doggedly on. Pauline remained where she was.
The dusk in the ravine deepened to darkness across which the first firefly outlined the pattern his followers would elaborate in their season. A tree toad set up its liquid warble. The torch fell from Alayne’s hand and went out. She clasped the railing of the bridge and bent over it, as though she were going to be sick. She felt in her face the chilled breath of the stream.
Renny came and put his hand on her back, but she pressed her breast against the railing, writhing away from his touch.
“How long has that woman been your mistress?” she asked.
“Alayne — don’t!”
“I asked you how long.”
He returned fiercely — “She is not my mistress.”
With the insistence and hollowness of a bell she repeated her question. The firefly sketched his design more intricately on the darkness.
Renny said — “Now, Alayne, pull yourself together. Don’t be hysterical. This isn’t the first time that a man who loves his wife —”
“Don’t use that word to me,” she interrupted harshly. “Love! Yes — I suppose you do love me — as a man loves his fireside chair — his old coat — all I want to know is — how long?”
“Come up to the house. There’s a horrible chill rising from the water.”
“Chill —” she repeated scornfully, “I feel no chill, I feel a fever of heat!”
He took her forcibly in his hands. He said quietly:
“You must come to the house.”
She straightened her body and allowed herself to be led, as though blind, along the path. He picked up the torch and dropped it into his pocket.
He led her into the dining room and turned on the lights. He closed the doors and said, in a tone almost matter-of-fact — “Now, I’m going to give you something to drink.”
He was shocked by her grey-white pallor, her expression of outrage and hate.
“Yes,” she said harshly. “I need to be drugged, doped. Give me something that will make me forget all this — if you can!”
He poured a little brandy into a glass and offered it to her. She struck it violently away with her hand and the glass lay shattered on the floor.
She looked at him as though she saw him for the first time, and every hard-bitten line of his face was hateful to her. He scowled ruefully at the spilt brandy, and said:
“I wish you wouldn’t carry on like this.”
“I dare say you do,” she returned bitterly. “It’s very troublesome of me. I’m not at all the sort of wife you should have.” She looked steadily at him for a space, then she began to cry loudly and brokenly. He remembered with swift relief that the servants were out for the evening. They were alone except for the sleeping child. His highly coloured face was now almost as white as Alayne’s. He stood transfixed till the noise of her crying subsided, then he repeated:
“Clara is not my mistress.”
“Oh, why do you lie to me?” she exclaimed brokenly.
He was silent a moment, then said, in a low voice:
“I don’t deny that she and I were once intimate.”
“When?”
“Last fall. But I do deny that there has been anything between us since.”
She said, in a shaking voice — “Perhaps you can explain that passionate outburst of yours on the bridge.”
“I value her friendship.”
“Her friendship! That woman’s friendship! I tell you she is sex personified.”
“And I tell you that she is a colder woman sexually than you.”
The