If I could say and believe that I loved you I would say so now, but I can’t.
I don’t love you.
Why should I say that I do?”
In the content of Aileen’s nature was a portion that was purely histrionic, a portion that was childish—petted and spoiled—a portion that was sheer unreason, and a portion that was splendid emotion—deep, dark, involved.
At this statement of Cowperwood’s which seemed to throw her back on herself for ever and ever to be alone, she first pleaded willingness to compromise—to share.
She had not fought Stephanie Platow, she had not fought Florence Cochrane, nor Cecily Haguenin, nor Mrs. Hand, nor, indeed, anybody after Rita, and she would fight no more.
She had not spied on him in connection with Berenice—she had accidentally met them. True, she had gone with other men, but? . . . Berenice was beautiful, she admitted it, but so was she in her way still—a little, still. Couldn’t he find a place for her yet in his life?
Wasn’t there room for both?
At this expression of humiliation and defeat Cowperwood was sad, sick, almost nauseated.
How could one argue?
How make her understand?
“I wish it were possible, Aileen,” he concluded, finally and heavily, “but it isn’t.”
All at once she arose, her eyes red but dry.
“You don’t love me, then, at all, do you?
Not a bit?”
“No, Aileen, I don’t.
I don’t mean by that that I dislike you.
I don’t mean to say that you aren’t interesting in your way as a woman and that I don’t sympathize with you. I do.
But I don’t love you any more.
I can’t.
The thing I used to feel I can’t feel any more.”
She paused for a moment, uncertain how to take this, the while she whitened, grew more tense, more spiritual than she had been in many a day.
Now she felt desperate, angry, sick, but like the scorpion that ringed by fire can turn only on itself.
What a hell life was, she told herself.
How it slipped away and left one aging, horribly alone!
Love was nothing, faith nothing—nothing, nothing!
A fine light of conviction, intensity, intention lit her eye for the moment.
“Very well, then,” she said, coolly, tensely.
“I know what I’ll do.
I’ll not live this way.
I’ll not live beyond to-night. I want to die, anyhow, and I will.”
It was by no means a cry, this last, but a calm statement.
It should prove her love.
To Cowperwood it seemed unreal, bravado, a momentary rage intended to frighten him.
She turned and walked up the grand staircase, which was near—a splendid piece of marble and bronze fifteen feet wide, with marble nereids for newel-posts, and dancing figures worked into the stone.
She went into her room quite calmly and took up a steel paper-cutter of dagger design—a knife with a handle of bronze and a point of great sharpness. Coming out and going along the balcony over the court of orchids, where Cowperwood still was seated, she entered the sunrise room with its pool of water, its birds, its benches, its vines.
Locking the door, she sat down and then, suddenly baring an arm, jabbed a vein—ripped it for inches—and sat there to bleed.
Now she would see whether she could die, whether he would let her.
Uncertain, astonished, not able to believe that she could be so rash, not believing that her feeling could be so great, Cowperwood still remained where she had left him wondering.
He had not been so greatly moved—the tantrums of women were common—and yet— Could she really be contemplating death?
How could she?
How ridiculous!
Life was so strange, so mad.
But this was Aileen who had just made this threat, and she had gone up the stairs to carry it out, perhaps. Impossible!
How could it be?
Yet back of all his doubts there was a kind of sickening feeling, a dread.
He recalled how she had assaulted Rita Sohlberg.
He hurried up the steps now and into her room.
She was not there.
He went quickly along the balcony, looking here and there, until he came to the sunrise room.