Shadows of Flames Part 116

"Morris ... that morning at Newport ... when you said those words to me ... you told me afterwards--that it was Belinda who had made you ...

suspect me."

"Ah ... don't put it that way!..."

"What other way can I put it? You did tell me it was Belinda, didn't you?"

"Yes. And a more...."

"Wait, Morris. I want to ask you something. Whether you answer it or not, I must ask it. It's this: You had been with Belinda--before you came to me. Had you been together--like lovers?"

He dropped his face into his two hands. She could see the hot flush on it between his fingers.

"Oh ... but you're hard ..." he groaned.

Now Sophy had her moment of bitterness.

"I know," she said, "that the perfect wife is supposed to be motherly when her husband's fancy strays--and lover-like when it turns home again. But I am not perfect in any way. And I don't think I'm hard when I ask for truth between us."

Loring dropped his hands and uncovered eyes ablaze with a helpless fury of regret and vindictiveness.

"I wish to G.o.d the girl had never been born!" he cried.

"You haven't answered me yet," said Sophy.

He gazed at her with a sort of braggadocio of defiance for an instant, then dropped his face into his hands again.

"Oh ... it's no use!..." he lamented. "We are low brutes ... men are low brutes.... Pa.s.sion is a low thing...."

"No--real pa.s.sion is not low," Sophy broke in on him.

"You know what I mean...." he muttered.

"Yes. I do. But don't call mere sensuality pa.s.sion. Real pa.s.sion is like a great, flowering tree. Its roots strike deep into the earth ... its crown is among the stars. Do you call a red rose 'low' because it springs from the earth?"

"How you catch one up!" protested Loring moodily.

She rushed on:

"I do hate so to hear that word misused--abused! Sensual fancies are low because they have no soul ... no flowering. They are like truffles ...

all of the earth earthy. Yes ... there are truffle-loves," she ended bitterly.

"And men, you think, are like swine rooting for truffles!" he muttered.

"Sometimes ... when Circe is about...." she admitted.

Morris got up and leaned again upon the mantelpiece. He heaved a disconsolate sigh.

"Oh, Lord!... What a talk for a man to have with his wife!" he said heavily.

XLI

Sophy sat watching him, and her heart yearned over him. In spite of her flash of bitterness, she did feel truly mother-like towards him. He seemed to her so young--so very, touchingly young as he leaned there against the old, smoke-toned ivory of the carved mantelpiece, grasping the ledge, his forehead on the back of his hand. She knew how crus.h.i.+ngly he was realising that he had "made a mess of things." But then--he _had_ made a mess of things. She was powerless to comfort him there. If she could only show him how much better it would be not to try to rearrange this tangle--but to step free of it, and begin over ... that there was no real adjustment of their two lives--their two utterly different natures, possible.... Could she show him? Well ... she could at least try....

"Morris," she said softly. "Suppose we try to look at it all from another angle? Suppose we try to see it all as though _we_ weren't concerned in it--as if some one had asked our impartial advice? Don't you think that would be a good way to get at it?"

"But what is it you want to 'get at,' Sophy? What is it you want me to do? G.o.d knows I'm ready to do anything...."

"Anything?"

"Yes ... anything in reason," he hedged nervously.

"Would you call it reasonable for us both to be free?"

He started--eyed her suspiciously.

"How 'free'? Free in what way?"

"Quite, quite free, Morris."

He paled.

"Divorce...?" he said.

"Yes."

"You want to divorce me?"

"I want us both to have our own lives wholly in our own hands again--that is the only way."

He stared at her, whiter and whiter.

"Didn't you ever ... love me ... at all?" he managed, at last.

"Ah!--you know whether I loved you...."

"You ... you mean ... I ... I've killed it?"

"Yes, dear."

"Oh, you are cruel ... you are cruel!..." he burst out. He stared at her, his face working. "You're the crudest woman G.o.d ever made!" he said huskily.

Sophy was white too. She, too, stammered a little.

"I ... I think ... that truth ... is nearly always cruel," she said.

"But it's only truth that will make us free----"