Were there such women?
Why did artists paint them?
Yet the little Christ was sweet.
Art bored Aileen unless others were enthusiastic.
She craved only the fanfare of the living—not painted resemblances.
She returned to the music-room, to the court of orchids, and was just about to go up-stairs to prepare herself a drink and read a novel when Cowperwood observed:
“You’re bored, aren’t you?”
“Oh no; I’m used to lonely evenings,” she replied, quietly and without any attempt at sarcasm.
Relentless as he was in hewing life to his theory—hammering substance to the form of his thought—yet he was tender, too, in the manner of a rainbow dancing over an abyss.
For the moment he wanted to say,
“Poor girlie, you do have a hard time, don’t you, with me?” but he reflected instantly how such a remark would be received.
He meditated, holding his book in his hand above his knee, looking at the purling water that flowed and flowed in sprinkling showers over the sportive marble figures of mermaids, a Triton, and nymphs astride of fishes.
“You’re really not happy in this state, any more, are you?” he inquired.
“Would you feel any more comfortable if I stayed away entirely?”
His mind had turned of a sudden to the one problem that was fretting him and to the opportunities of this hour.
“You would,” she replied, for her boredom merely concealed her unhappiness in no longer being able to command in the least his interest or his sentiment.
“Why do you say that in just that way?” he asked.
“Because I know you would. I know why you ask.
You know well enough that it isn’t anything I want to do that is concerned. It’s what you want to do.
You’d like to turn me off like an old horse now that you are tired of me, and so you ask whether I would feel any more comfortable.
What a liar you are, Frank!
How really shifty you are!
I don’t wonder you’re a multimillionaire.
If you could live long enough you would eat up the whole world.
Don’t you think for one moment that I don’t know of Berenice Fleming here in New York, and how you’re dancing attendance on her—because I do.
I know how you have been hanging about her for months and months—ever since we have been here, and for long before.
You think she’s wonderful now because she’s young and in society.
I’ve seen you in the Waldorf and in the Park hanging on her every word, looking at her with adoring eyes.
What a fool you are, to be so big a man!
Every little snip, if she has pink cheeks and a doll’s face, can wind you right around her finger.
Rita Sohlberg did it; Stephanie Platow did it; Florence Cochrane did it; Cecily Haguenin—and Heaven knows how many more that I never heard of.
I suppose Mrs. Hand still lives with you in Chicago—the cheap strumpet!
Now it’s Berenice Fleming and her frump of a mother.
From all I can learn you haven’t been able to get her yet—because her mother’s too shrewd, perhaps—but you probably will in the end.
It isn’t you so much as your money that they’re after.
Pah!
Well, I’m unhappy enough, but it isn’t anything you can remedy any more.
Whatever you could do to make me unhappy you have done, and now you talk of my being happier away from you.
Clever boy, you!
I know you the way I know my ten fingers.
You don’t deceive me at any time in any way any more. I can’t do anything about it.
I can’t stop you from making a fool of yourself with every woman you meet, and having people talk from one end of the country to the other.
Why, for a woman to be seen with you is enough to fix her reputation forever.
Right now all Broadway knows you’re running after Berenice Fleming.
Her name will soon be as sweet as those of the others you’ve had.
She might as well give herself to you.
If she ever had a decent reputation it’s gone by now, you can depend upon that.”
These remarks irritated Cowperwood greatly—enraged him—particularly her references to Berenice.
What were you to do with such a woman? he thought.
Her tongue was becoming unbearable; her speech in its persistence and force was that of a termagant.