"Feeling! Feeling!" taunted Aileen, suddenly. "Yes, I know how much feeling you have. You have feeling enough to give other women sets of jade and jewels, and to run around with every silly little snip you meet. You needn't come home here at ten o'clock, when you can't go anywhere else, and talk about feeling for me. I know how much feeling you have. Pshaw!"
She flung herself irritably back in her chair and opened her book.
Cowperwood gazed at her solemnly, for this thrust in regard to Stephanie was a revelation. This woman business could grow peculiarly exasperating at times.
"What do you mean, anyhow?" he observed, cautiously and with much seeming candor. "I haven't given any jade or jewels to any one, nor have I been running around with any 'little snips,' as you call them. I don't know what you are talking about, Aileen."
"Oh, Frank," commented Aileen, wearily and incredulously, "you lie so! Why do you stand there and lie? I'm so tired of it; I'm so sick of it all. How should the servants know of so many things to talk of here if they weren't true? I didn't invite Mrs. Platow to come and ask me why you had given her daughter a set of jade.
I know why you lie; you want to hush me up and keep quiet. You're afraid I'll go to Mr. Haguenin or Mr. Cochrane or Mr. Platow, or to all three. Well, you can rest your soul on that score. I won't. I'm sick of you and your lies. Stephanie Platow--the thin stick! Cecily Haguenin--the little piece of gum! And Florence Cochrane--she looks like a dead fish!" (Aileen had a genius for characterization at times.) "If it just weren't for the way I acted toward my family in Philadelphia, and the talk it would create, and the injury it would do you financially, I'd act to-morrow. I'd leave you--that's what I'd do. And to think that I should ever have believed that you really loved me, or could care for any woman permanently. Bosh! But I don't care. Go on!
Only I'll tell you one thing. You needn't think I'm going to go on enduring all this as I have in the past. I'm not. You're not going to deceive me always. I'm not going to stand it. I'm not so old yet. There are plenty of men who will be glad to pay me attention if you won't. I told you once that I wouldn't be faithful to you if you weren't to me, and I won't be. I'll show you. I'll go with other men. I will! I will! I swear it."
"Aileen," he asked, softly, pleadingly, realizing the futility of additional lies under such circumstances, "won't you forgive me this time? Bear with me for the present. I scarcely understand myself at times. I am not like other men. You and I have run together a long time now. Why not wait awhile? Give me a chance!
See if I do not change. I may."
"Oh yes, wait! Change. You may change. Haven't I waited? Haven't I walked the floor night after night! when you haven't been here?
Bear with you--yes, yes! Who's to bear with me when my heart is breaking? Oh, God!" she suddenly added, with passionate vigor, "I'm miserable! I'm miserable! My heart aches! It aches!"
She clutched her breast and swung from the room, moving with that vigorous stride that had once appealed to him so, and still did.
Alas, alas! it touched him now, but only as a part of a very shifty and cruel world. He hurried out of the room after her, and (as at the time of the Rita Sohlberg incident) slipped his arm about her waist; but she pulled away irritably. "No, no!" she exclaimed.
"Let me alone. I'm tired of that."
"You're really not fair to me, Aileen," with a great show of feeling and sincerity. "You're letting one affair that came between us blind your whole point of view. I give you my word I haven't been unfaithful to you with Stephanie Platow or any other woman. I may have flirted with them a little, but that is really nothing. Why not be sensible? I'm not as black as you paint me. I'm moving in big matters that are as much for your concern and future as for mine. Be sensible, be liberal."
There was much argument--the usual charges and countercharges--but, finally, because of her weariness of heart, his petting, the unsolvability of it all, she permitted him for the time being to persuade her that there were still some crumbs of affection left.
She was soul-sick, heartsick. Even he, as he attempted to soothe her, realized clearly that to establish the reality of his love in her belief he would have to make some much greater effort to entertain and comfort her, and that this, in his present mood, and with his leaning toward promiscuity, was practically impossible.
For the time being a peace might be patched up, but in view of what she expected of him--her passion and selfish individuality --it could not be. He would have to go on, and she would have to leave him, if needs be; but he could not cease or go back. He was too passionate, too radiant, too individual and complex to belong to any one single individual alone.
