What were those eyes, so remote in their gaze, surveying?
Love? Cowperwood?
Yes!
Yes!
Gone in a flash, and permanently, as it seemed to Aileen, was the value of this house, her dream of a new social entrance.
And she had already suffered so much; endured so much.
Cowperwood being absent for a fortnight, she moped in her room, sighed, raged, and then began to drink.
Finally she sent for an actor who had once paid attention to her in Chicago, and whom she had later met here in the circle of the theaters.
She was not so much burning with lust as determined in her drunken gloom that she would have revenge.
For days there followed an orgy, in which wine, bestiality, mutual recrimination, hatred, and despair were involved.
Sobering eventually, she wondered what Cowperwood would think of her now if he knew this?
Could he ever love her any more?
Could he even tolerate her?
But what did he care?
It served him right, the dog!
She would show him, she would wreck his dream, she would make her own life a scandal, and his too!
She would shame him before all the world.
He should never have a divorce!
He should never be able to marry a girl like that and leave her alone—never, never, never!
When Cowperwood returned she snarled at him without vouchsafing an explanation.
He suspected at once that she had been spying upon his manoeuvers.
Moreover, he did not fail to notice her heavy eyes, superheated cheeks, and sickly breath.
Obviously she had abandoned her dream of a social victory of some kind, and was entering on a career of what—debauchery?
Since coming to New York she had failed utterly, he thought, to make any single intelligent move toward her social rehabilitation.
The banal realms of art and the stage, with which in his absence or neglect she had trifled with here, as she had done in Chicago, were worse than useless; they were destructive.
He must have a long talk with her one of these days, must confess frankly to his passion for Berenice, and appeal to her sympathy and good sense.
What scenes would follow!
Yet she might succumb, at that.
Despair, pride, disgust might move her.
Besides, he could now bestow upon her a very large fortune.
She could go to Europe or remain here and live in luxury.
He would always remain friendly with her—helpful, advisory—if she would permit it.
The conversation which eventually followed on this topic was of such stuff as dreams are made of.
It sounded hollow and unnatural within the walls where it took place.
Consider the great house in upper Fifth Avenue, its magnificent chambers aglow, of a stormy Sunday night.
Cowperwood was lingering in the city at this time, busy with a group of Eastern financiers who were influencing his contest in the state legislature of Illinois.
Aileen was momentarily consoled by the thought that for him perhaps love might, after all, be a thing apart—a thing no longer vital and soul-controlling.
To-night he was sitting in the court of orchids, reading a book—the diary of Cellini, which some one had recommended to him—stopping to think now and then of things in Chicago or Springfield, or to make a note.
Outside the rain was splashing in torrents on the electric-lighted asphalt of Fifth Avenue—the Park opposite a Corot-like shadow.
Aileen was in the music-room strumming indifferently.
She was thinking of times past—Lynde, from whom she had not heard in half a year; Watson Skeet, the sculptor, who was also out of her ken at present.
When Cowperwood was in the city and in the house she was accustomed from habit to remain indoors or near.
So great is the influence of past customs of devotion that they linger long past the hour when the act ceases to become valid.
“What an awful night!” she observed once, strolling to a window to peer out from behind a brocaded valance.
“It is bad, isn’t it?” replied Cowperwood, as she returned.
“Hadn’t you thought of going anywhere this evening?”
“No—oh no,” replied Aileen, indifferently.
She rose restlessly from the piano, and strolled on into the great picture-gallery.
Stopping before one of Raphael Sanzio’s Holy Families, only recently hung, she paused to contemplate the serene face—medieval, Madonnaesque, Italian.
The lady seemed fragile, colorless, spineless—without life.