though she did not lie she managed to achieve an effect that was not the truth.
The great thing which she neglected to admit was this . . . that she had come now to the point where it was no longer possible to take him with her. Even his fantastic dreams could not make him more than he was, and that was not enough. He had come to the end of his tether. She had barely begun. Imagine him in Mrs. Callendar's drawing-room! Fancy the abrupt Sabine Cane talking to him as she talked to Ellen! He, she knew, would suffer more than any one.
She said to him, "I'm sorry, but on Thursday I shall be out for dinner. . . . I've got to dine with Mrs. Callendar. . . . It's business, dear. . . . I must do these things."
And at the speech, Clarence assumed that hurt and crestfallen look which touched her sense of pity. It was the one thing which could alter her determination; indeed there were times when she must have suspected that he used it consciously, as his only weapon. It moved her even now, so that she went so far as to kiss him and say, "It's just one night."
"But it's a beginning." He saw it perhaps, clearly enough, more clearly than she ever imagined. "I wish you wouldn't."
And then she explained to him again the things which it was necessary for her to do in order to win what she must have. She talked long and eloquently, for she was earnest and she pitied him. It was clear that her dishonesty arose not so much out of any evil calculation as out of a desire to have everything, to go her way and still leave Clarence unharmed and happy. It was a thing impossible, of course, yet it never seemed so to her. There was in her so much of her indomitable mother that she was never able to believe in the impossible.
So she talked eloquently and at length she even arranged it for him that he should dine on Thursday night with Mr. and Mrs. Bunce. Thus, by a single act, she accomplished another thing. She dined with the Bunces without having to dine with them.
