Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/345

Rh "My share, you mean? Oh, it's very simple." He paused, and added in a tone of laboured ease: "I'm going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow—"

She stared, not understanding. "To Fontainebleau—?"

Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. "Well—I chose Fontainebleau—I don't know why except that we've never been there together."

At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead. She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in her throat. "How grotesque—how utterly disgusting!"

He gave a slight shrug. "I didn't make the laws. "

"But isn't it too stupid and degrading that such things should be necessary when two people want to part—?" She broke off again, silenced by the echo of that fatal "want to part."

He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligations involved.

"You haven't yet told me," he suggested, "how you happen to be living here."

"Here—with the Fulmer children?" She roused herself, trying to catch his easier note. "Oh, I've simply been governessing them for a few weeks, while Nat and Grace are in Sicily." She did not say: "It's because I've parted with Strefford." Somehow it helped her wounded