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Updated: May 20, 2025
Only such natures as Julie's can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the horror of a loveless kiss, of the heart's apostasy followed by dolorous prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She could have longed for death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from her child, she would have sprung from the window and dashed herself upon the pavement.
They had paused before a magnificent Turner of the middle period, hitherto unseen by the public, and the Duchess was reading from the catalogue in Julie's ear.
Evylyn flew to her sewing-basket, rummaged until she found a torn handkerchief, and hurried downstairs. In a moment Julie was crying in her arms as she searched for the cut, faint, disparaging evidences of which appeared on Julie's dress. "My THU-umb!" explained Julie. "Oh-h-h-h, t'urts." "It was the bowl here, the he one," said Hilda apologetically.
"Ju is so dear in her little house, and Harry's so sweet with her," she went on with vivacity. "Daddy and I had dinner with them Tuesday. Bruce said Rebecca was lovely with the boys, we're going to Julie's again sometime. I declare it's so long since we've been anywhere without the children that we both felt funny. It was a lovely evening."
Suddenly she turned, and laid a hand on Julie's arm. "Come and see my sweet Cecilia," she said. "She is gay; she will amuse you." She was thinking again what a pity it was that Julie had no child. "To see Cecilia and the black cat? Very well some day." You could not have told what she meant.
Imperious as he was, and stiffened by a good many of those petty prides which the spoiled children of the world escape so hardly, he found himself hesitating groping for his words. The Duchess meanwhile drew Julie impulsively towards a chair. "Do sit down. You look so tired." But Julie's gaze was still bent upon the Duke. She restrained her friend's eager hand, and the Duke collected himself.
But the sudden impression on Julie's mind, as she saw him thus, was of a man worn and prematurely aged markedly older and graver, even, since their marriage, since that memorable evening by the side of Como when, by that moral power of which he seemed often to be the mere channel and organ, he had overcome her own will and linked her life with his. She looked at him in a kind of terror.
No doubt she had been telling her story to some attorney, in the hope that money might thus he extracted, and had been dragging her Julie's name through the mud, telling all she knew of that wretched Florentine story. As to all that Lady Ongar had no doubt, and yet she wished to send the woman money!
The Duchess believed that, after her inspection of the house in Heribert Street, Julie had gone on to Bloomsbury to find Madame Bornier. Jacob Delafield was there, not much inclined to talk, even as Julie's champion. And, one by one, Lady Henry's oldest habitués, the "criminals" of the night before, dropped in. Dr. Meredith arrived with a portfolio containing what seemed to be proof-sheets.
The gulls were screaming and fighting over some refuse in the harbour, and he watched the beat of their wings, fascinated. If only he, too, could catch the wind and be up and away like that! He jumped up and paced up and down the floor restlessly, and he told himself that Hilda was right and he was a cad and worse. Julie's kiss on his lips burned there yet.
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