Not what they said about you critically, but the facts, if they are facts, that they pieced together.
You never cared for your first wife, did you?”
“Well, I thought I did, at first.
But, of course, I was very young when I married her.”
“And the present Mrs. Cowperwood?”
“Oh, Aileen, yes.
I cared for her very much at one time,” he confessed.
“She did a great deal for me once, and I am not ungrateful, Bevy.
Besides, she was very attractive, very, to me at that time.
But I was still young, and not as exacting mentally as I am now.
The fault is not Aileen’s. It was a mistake due to inexperience.”
“You make me feel better when you talk that way,” she said.
“You’re not as ruthless as you’re said to be.
Just the same, I am many years younger than Aileen, and I have the feeling that without my looks my mind might not be very important to you.”
Cowperwood smiled.
“Quite true.
I have no excuses to offer for the way I am,” he said.
“Intelligently or unintelligently, I try to follow the line of self-interest, because, as I see it, there is no other guide.
Maybe I am wrong, but I think most of us do that.
It may be that there are other interests that come before those of the individual, but in favoring himself, he appears, as a rule, to favor others.”
“I agree, somehow, with your point of view,” commented Berenice.
“The one thing I am trying to make clear to you,” went on Cowperwood, smiling affectionately at her, “is that I am not seeking to belittle or underestimate any hurt I may have inflicted.
Pain seems to go with life and change.
I just want to state my case as I see it, so that you may understand me.”
“Thanks,” and Berenice laughed lightly, “but you needn’t feel you are on the witness stand.”
“Well, almost.
But please let me explain a little about Aileen.
Her nature is one of love and emotion, but her intellect is not, and never was, sufficient for my needs.
I understand her thoroughly, and I am grateful for all she did for me in Philadelphia.
She stood by me, to her own social detriment.
Because of that I have stood by her, even though I cannot possibly love her as I once did.
She has my name, my residence.
She feels she should have both.”
He paused, a little dubious as to what Berenice would say.
“You understand, of course?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” exclaimed Berenice, “of course, I understand.
And, please, I do not want to disturb her in any way.
I did not come to you with that in view.”
“You’re very generous, Bevy, but unfair to yourself,” said Cowperwood.
“But I want you to know how much you mean to my entire future.
You may not understand, but I acknowledge it here and now.
I have not followed you for eight years for nothing.
It means that I care, and care deeply.”
“I know,” she said, softly, not a little impressed by this declaration.
“For all of eight years,” he continued, “I have had an ideal.
That ideal is you.”
He paused, wishing to embrace her, but feeling for the moment that he should not.
Then, reaching into a waistcoat pocket, he took from it a thin gold locket, the size of a silver dollar, which he opened and handed to her.
One interior face of it was lined with a photograph of Berenice as a girl of twelve, thin, delicate, supercilious, self-contained, distant, as she was to this hour.
She looked at it and recognized it as a photograph that had been taken when she and her mother were still in Louisville, her mother a woman of social position and means.