Durham could not tell whether the irony of her tone
was self-directed or addressed to himself—perhaps
it comprehended them both. At any rate, he chose
to overlook his own share in it in replying earnestly:
“So much so, that I can’t see how you can
have left me nothing to add to what you say you have
taken.”
“Ah, but you don’t know what that is!”
She continued to smile, elusively, ambiguously.
“And what’s more, you wouldn’t believe
me if I told you.”
“How do you know?” he rejoined.
“You didn’t believe me once before; and
this is so much more incredible.”
He took the taunt full in the face. “I
shall go away unhappy unless you tell me—but
then perhaps I have deserved to,” he confessed.
She shook her head again, advancing toward the door
with the evident intention of bringing their conference
to a close; but on the threshold she paused to launch
her reply.
“I can’t send you away unhappy, since
it is in the contemplation of your happiness that
I have found my reward.”
The next day Durham left with his family for England,
with the intention of not returning till after the
divorce should have been pronounced in September.
To say that he left with a quiet heart would be to
overstate the case: the fact that he could not
communicate to Madame de Malrive the substance of
his talk with her sister-in-law still hung upon him
uneasily. But of definite apprehensions the lapse
of time gradually freed him, and Madame de Malrive’s
letters, addressed more frequently to his mother and
sisters than to himself, reflected, in their reassuring
serenity, the undisturbed course of events.
There was to Durham something peculiarly touching—as
of an involuntary confession of almost unbearable
loneliness—in the way she had regained,
with her re-entry into the clear air of American associations,
her own fresh trustfulness of view. Once she had
accustomed herself to the surprise of finding her divorce
unopposed, she had been, as it now seemed to Durham,
in almost too great haste to renounce the habit of
weighing motives and calculating chances. It
was as though her coming liberation had already freed
her from the garb of a mental slavery, as though she
could not too soon or too conspicuously cast off the
ugly badge of suspicion. The fact that Durham’s
cleverness had achieved so easy a victory over forces
apparently impregnable, merely raised her estimate
of that cleverness to the point of letting her feel
that she could rest in it without farther demur.
He had even noticed in her, during his few hours in
Paris, a tendency to reproach herself for her lack
of charity, and a desire, almost as fervent as his
own, to expiate it by exaggerated recognition of the
disinterestedness of her opponents—if opponents
they could still be called. This sudden change
in her attitude was peculiarly moving to Durham.
