The manner in which he had sinned against her was plain enough, but the way in which, out of pique, she had forsaken him was in the other balance.
Say what one will, the loyalty of woman, whether a condition in nature or an evolved accident of sociology, persists as a dominating thought in at least a section of the race; and women themselves, be it said, are the ones who most loudly and openly subscribe to it.
Cowperwood himself was fully aware that Aileen had deserted him, not because she loved him less or Lynde more, but because she was hurt—and deeply so.
Aileen knew that he knew this.
From one point of view it enraged her and made her defiant; from another it grieved her to think she had uselessly sinned against his faith in her.
Now he had ample excuse to do anything he chose.
Her best claim on him—her wounds—she had thrown away as one throws away a weapon.
Her pride would not let her talk to him about this, and at the same time she could not endure the easy, tolerant manner with which he took it.
His smiles, his forgiveness, his sometimes pleasant jesting were all a horrible offense.
To complete her mental quandary, she was already beginning to quarrel with Lynde over this matter of her unbreakable regard for Cowperwood.
With the sufficiency of a man of the world Lynde intended that she should succumb to him completely and forget her wonderful husband. When with him she was apparently charmed and interested, yielding herself freely, but this was more out of pique at Cowperwood’s neglect than from any genuine passion for Lynde.
In spite of her pretensions of anger, her sneers, and criticisms whenever Cowperwood’s name came up, she was, nevertheless, hopelessly fond of him and identified with him spiritually, and it was not long before Lynde began to suspect this.
Such a discovery is a sad one for any master of women to make.
It jolted his pride severely.
“You care for him still, don’t you?” he asked, with a wry smile, upon one occasion.
They were sitting at dinner in a private room at Kinsley’s, and Aileen, whose color was high, and who was becomingly garbed in metallic-green silk, was looking especially handsome.
Lynde had been proposing that she should make special arrangements to depart with him for a three-months’ stay in Europe, but she would have nothing to do with the project.
She did not dare.
Such a move would make Cowperwood feel that she was alienating herself forever; it would give him an excellent excuse to leave her.
“Oh, it isn’t that,” she had declared, in reply to Lynde’s query.
“I just don’t want to go.
I can’t.
I’m not prepared.
It’s nothing but a notion of yours, anyhow.
You’re tired of Chicago because it’s getting near spring.
You go and I’ll be here when you come back, or I may decide to come over later.”
She smiled.
Lynde pulled a dark face.
“Hell!” he said.
“I know how it is with you.
You still stick to him, even when he treats you like a dog.
You pretend not to love him when as a matter of fact you’re mad about him.
I’ve seen it all along.
You don’t really care anything about me.
You can’t.
You’re too crazy about him.”
“Oh, shut up!” replied Aileen, irritated greatly for the moment by this onslaught.
“You talk like a fool.
I’m not anything of the sort.
I admire him.
How could any one help it?” (At this time, of course, Cowperwood’s name was filling the city.) “He’s a very wonderful man.
He was never brutal to me.
He’s a full-sized man—I’ll say that for him.”
By now Aileen had become sufficiently familiar with Lynde to criticize him in her own mind, and even outwardly by innuendo, for being a loafer and idler who had never created in any way the money he was so freely spending.
She had little power to psychologize concerning social conditions, but the stalwart constructive persistence of Cowperwood along commercial lines coupled with the current American contempt of leisure reflected somewhat unfavorably upon Lynde, she thought.
Lynde’s face clouded still more at this outburst.
“You go to the devil,” he retorted.
“I don’t get you at all.
Sometimes you talk as though you were fond of me. At other times you’re all wrapped up in him.
Now you either care for me or you don’t.