Read Edith Wharton - SSC 10 for Free Online

however poor a part he had played so far, he wasn’t going to add to it the
role of the duped husband…
                 “Damn
it, I’ll go round there myself and see,” he muttered, squaring his shoulders,
and walking resolutely across the room to the door. But as he reached the
entrance-hall the faint click of a latchkey greeted him; and sweeter music he
had never heard. Nadeja stood in the doorway, pale but
smiling. “Jim—you were not going out again?”
                 He
gave a sheepish laugh. “Do you know what time it is? I was getting scared.”
                 “Scared
for me?” She smiled again. “Dear me, yes! It’s nearly
dinner-time, isn’t it?”
                 He
followed her into the drawing-room and shut the door. He felt like a husband in
an old-fashioned problem play; and in a moment he had spoken like one. “Nad,
where’ve you come from?” he broke out abruptly.
                 “Why,
the studio. It was my last sitting.”
                 “People
don’t sit for their portraits in the dark.”
                 He
saw a faint surprise in her eyes as she bent to the samovar. “No; I was not sitting
all the time. Not for the last hour or more, I suppose.”
                 She
spoke as quietly as usual, yet he thought he caught a tremor of resentment in
her voice. Against himself—or against the painter? But
how he was letting his imagination run away with him! He sat down in his
accustomed armchair, took the cup of tea she held out. He was determined to
behave like a reasonable being, yet never had reason appeared to him so
unrelated to reality. “Ah, well—I suppose you two had a lot of things to talk
about. You rather fancy Svengaart, don’t you?”
                 “Oh,
yes; I like him very much. Do you know,” she asked earnestly, “how much he has
made during his visit to America? It was of course in confidence that he told
me. Two hundred thousand dollars. And he was rich before.”
                 She
spoke so solemnly that Targatt burst into a vague laugh. “Well, what of it? I
don’t know that it showed much taste to brag to you about the way he skins his
sitters. But it shows he didn’t make much of a sacrifice in painting you for
nothing,” he said irritably.
                 “No;
I said to him he might have done you too.”
                 “ Me?” Targatt’s laugh redoubled. “Well,
what did he say to that?”
                 “Oh,
he laughed as you are now laughing,” Nadeja rejoined. “But he says he will
never marry—never.”
                 Targatt
put down his cup with a rattle. “ Never
marry?
                 What
the devil are you talking about? Who cares whether he marries, anyhow?” he
gasped with a dry throat.
                 “I
do,” said Nadeja.
                 There
was a silence. Nadeja was lifting her tea-cup to her lips, and something in the
calm tree movement reminded him of Svengaart’s outburst when he had seen her
lift the pile of music. For the first time in his life Targatt seemed to
himself to be looking at her; and he wondered if it would also be the last. He
cleared his throat and tried to speak, to say something immense, magnanimous.
“Well, if—”
                 “No;
it’s useless. He will hear nothing. I said to him: ‘You will never anywhere
find such a plastik as Mouna’s’ …”
                 “Mound’s?”
     
                 She
turned to him with a slight shrug. “Oh, my poor Jim, are you quite blind?
Haven’t you seen how we have all been trying to make him want to marry Mouna?
It will be almost my first failure, I think,” she concluded with a
half-apologetic sigh.
                 Targatt
rested his chin on his hands and looked up at her. She looked tired, certainly,
and older; too tired and old for any one