But to Claire
the touch of her husband's lips was hateful--so hateful indeed that she
had to make an instant effort to hide the feeling of physical repulsion
with which that touch had suddenly engulfed her in certain dark recesses
of memory and revolt. "It is a charming medallion," she said hurriedly, "quite a work of art,
Jacques; and I thank you for having thought of it. It gives me
great--very great pleasure." And then something happened which was to her so utterly unexpected that
she gave a stifled cry of pain--almost it seemed of fear. As she forced herself to look straight into her husband's face, the
anguish in her own sore heart unlocked the key to his, and she perceived
with the eyes of the soul, which see, when they are not holden, so much
that is concealed from the eyes of the body, the suffering, the dumb
longing she had never allowed herself to know were there. For the first time since her marriage--since that wedding day of which
this was the tenth anniversary--Claire felt pity for Jacques as well as
for herself. For the first time her rebellious heart acknowledged that
her husband also was enmeshed in a web of tragic circumstance. "Jacques?" she cried. "Oh, Jacques!" And as she so uttered his name
twice, there came a look of acute distress and then of sudden resolution
on her face. "I wish you to know," she exclaimed, "that--that--if I
were a wicked woman I should perhaps be to you a better wife!" Thanks to
the language in which she spoke, there was a play on the word--that word
which in French signifies woman as well as wife. He stared at her, and uttered no word of answer, of understanding, in
response to her strange speech. At one time, not lately, but many years ago, Claire had sometimes tried
his patience by the odd, unreasonable things she said, and once, stung
beyond bearing, he had told her so. Remembering those cold, measured
words of rebuke, she now caught with quick, exultant relief at the idea
that Jacques had not understood the half-confession wrung from her by
her sudden vision of his pain; and she swung back to a belief she had
always held till just now, the belief that he was dull--dull and
unperceptive. With a nervous smile she turned again to her mirror, and then Jacques de
Wissant, with his wife's enigmatic words ringing in his ears, abruptly
left the room. *       *       *       *       *

As if pursued by some baneful presence, he hastened through Claire's
beautiful boudoir, across the dining-room hung with the Gobelins
tapestries which his wife had brought him as part of her slender dower,
and so into the oval hall which formed the centre of the house. And there Jacques de Wissant waited for a while, trying to still and to
co-ordinate his troubled thoughts and impressions. Ah yes, he had understood--understood only too well Claire's strange,
ambiguous utterance! There are subtle, unbreathed temptations which all
men and all women, when tortured by jealousy, not only understand but
divine before they are actually in being. Jacques de Wissant now believed that he was justified of the suspicions
of which he had been ashamed. His wife--moved by some obscure desire for
self-revelation to which he had had no clue--had flung at him the truth. Yes, without doubt Claire could have made him happy--so little would
have contented his hunger for her--had she been one of those light women
of whom he sometimes heard, who go from their husbands' kisses to those
of their lovers. But if he sometimes, nay, often heard of them, Jacques de Wissant knew
nothing of such women. The men of his race had known how to acquire
honest wives, aye, and keep them so. There had never been in the de
Wissant family any of those ugly scandals which stain other clans, and
which are remembered over generations in French provincial towns. Those
scandals which, if they provoke a laugh and cruel sneer when discussed
by the indifferent, are recalled with long faces and anxious whisperings
when a young girl's future is being discussed, and which make the
honourable marriage of daughters difficult of achievement. Jacques de Wissant thanked the God of his fathers that Claire had
nothing in common with such women as those: he thought he did not need
her assurance to know that his honour, in the usual, narrow sense of the
phrase, was safe in her hands, but still her strange, imprudent words of
half-avowal racked him with jealous and, yes, suspicious pain. Fortunately for him, he was a man burdened with much business, and so at
last he looked at his watch. Why, it was getting late--terribly late,
and he prided himself on his punctuality. Still, if he started now, at
once, he would be at the Hôtel de Ville a few minutes before ten
o'clock, the time when the first of the civil marriages he had to
celebrate that morning was timed to take place. Without passing through the house, he made his way rapidly round by the
gardens to the road, winding ribbon-wise behind the cliffs, where his
phaeton was waiting for him; for Jacques de Wissant had as yet resisted
the wish of his wife and the advice of those of his friends who
considered that he ought to purchase an automobile: driving had been
from boyhood one of his few pleasures and accomplishments. But as he drove, keeping his fine black bays well in hand, the five
miles into the town, and tried to fix his mind on a commercial problem
of great importance with which he would be expected to deal that day,
Jacques de Wissant found it impossible to think of any matter but that
which for the moment filled his heart to the exclusion of all else. That
matter concerned his own relations to his wife, and his wife's relations
to Commander Dupré. This gentleman of France was typical in more than one sense of his
nation and of his class--quite unlike, that is, to the fancy picture
which foreigners draw of the average Frenchman. Reserved and cold in
manner; proud, with an intense but never openly expressed pride in his
name and of what the bearers of it had achieved for their country;
obstinate and narrow as are apt to be all human beings whose judgment is
never questioned by those about them, Jacques de Wissant's fetish was
his personal honour and the honour of his name--of the name of Wissant. In his distress and disturbance of mind--for his wife's half confession
had outraged his sense of what was decorous and fitting--his memory
travelled over the map of his past life, aye, and even beyond the
boundaries of his own life. Before him lay spread retrospectively the story of his parents'
uneventful, happy marriage. They had been mated in the good old French
way, that is, up to their wedding morning they had never met save in the
presence of their respective parents. And yet--and yet how devoted they
had been to each other! So completely one in thought, in interest, in
sympathy had they grown that when, after thirty-three years of married
life, his father had died, Jacques' mother had not known how to go on
living.