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But he did this omitting, perhaps, the foundation of all that he was trying to say he didn't speak of Cytherea. He avoided putting the doll into words because he could think of none that would make his meaning, his attachment, clear. Lee couldn't, very well, across the remnants of dinner, admit to Savina that a doll bought out of a confectioner's window on Fifth Avenue so deeply influenced him.
But the winter night was cooling it a minor image of the final office of death; the choking hunger for Savina was dwindling. He hoped that it wouldn't be repeated. He couldn't answer for himself through many such attacks. Yes, his first love, though just as imperative, had been more ecstatic; the reaching for an ideal rather than the body of a woman.
He was still convinced that his life had fallen apart of itself; but he began to see that Savina had been more deeply involved in his act of liberty than he had suspected.
The children, if he took a late train, would be in bed, and Fanny, with her feet on the stool, engaged with her fancy work. Then his revolving thoughts took him back to the unanswered mystery of what, actually, had happened to Savina and him. He lost her for Cytherea, he lost Cytherea in her; the two, the immobile doll and the woman torn with vitality, merged to confound him.
Lee considered the advisability of taking her for a walk there were, he had seen from the train, no roads here for driving but, recalling the insolent staring and remarks she had met, he was forced to drop that possibility. Weary from the prolonged wakefulness of the night, Savina made an effort to sleep; and, waiting until she was measurably quiet, Lee went out.
Savina was filled with delight; a positive color glowed in place of the customary uniform pallor of her cheeks; she opened her bags with an irresistible youthful energy. "Think what we have been missing," she called above the sound of the water running into the tub; "and what we accepted so long for living. I suppose the wonderful thing is that we escaped.
Yet, he reminded himself, he hadn't left Eastlake, broken wide open his home, on account of Savina. This, he again insisted, would have happened independently of her; his life in Eastlake had broken up of its own accord; its elements had been too tenuous for the withstanding any longer of the stress of existence. But, he was forced to add, the collapse had been hastened by his knowledge of Savina.
His only reaction to that was the vigorous hope that it wouldn't come back. No, he had, mentally, settled the affair with Savina in the best possible manner; now he was strictly concerned with the bond between his wife and himself.
It would never come back; what a fool he had been to waste in aimless talk any of the few hours which together they owned. He whispered this to Savina, in his arms; but she would permit no criticism of him. It was time, she discovered, for them to dress for their party: "I don't want you to go. Why can't you be with me? But then, the servants! Lee, I am going to die when you leave.
Lee couldn't pretend to answer all this for women, or even in part for Savina. Her attitude, he knew, in that it never touched the abstract, was far simpler than his; she didn't regard herself as scarlet, but thought of the rest of the world as unendurably drab. The last thing she had said to him was that she was glad, glad, that it had happened.
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