Mina Raff should
be burned alive, something terrible done to her." Fanny's voice had the
hard cold edge of fanatical conviction. "If she had come into my house
making trouble.... But that couldn't have happened; I'd have known at
once."
"You are more feminine than I am," Claire told her. "I see this in a
very detached manner, as if it didn't concern me. I suppose I can't
realize that it has happened to us. It has! But if you are right,
Fanny, and it's necessary to treat a man like a green hunter, then this
was bound to occur. I couldn't do anything so--so humiliating; he could
bolt sooner or later. I did the best I knew how: I was amusing as
possible and always looked well enough. I never bothered Peyton about
himself and encouraged him to keep as much of his freedom as possible.
"I don't believe in the other," she said to Fanny Randon in a sharp
accession of rebellion; "it is degrading, and I won't live that way, I
won't put up with it. If he wants to go, to be with Mina Raff, how in
God's name can I stop it? I won't have him in my bed with another woman
in his heart; I made that clear to you. And I can't have him hot and
cold--now all Mina and then the sanctity of his home. I've never had a
house of that kind; it was christened, like a ship, with champagne.
"I have never cared for domestic things. I'd rather wear a dinner-gown
than an apron; I'd a damn sight rather spin a roulette wheel than rock
a cradle.
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