An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (i can read book club .TXT) 📕

the door and admitted him, having previously lit a candle as was her custom in order to avoid detection as much as possible, and at once he began in a whisper:

“Gee, but this society business here is getting to be the dizzy thing, honey. I never saw such a town as this. Once you go with these people one place to do one thing, they always have something else they want you to do. They’re on the go all the time. When I went there Friday (he was referring to his lie about having gone to the Griffiths’), I thought that would be the last until after the holidays, but yesterday, and just when I was planning to go somewhere else, I got a note saying they expected me to come there again today for dinner sure.”

“And today when I thought the dinner would begin at two,” he continued to explain, “and end in time for me to be around here by eight like I said, it didn’t start until three and only broke up a few minutes ago. Isn’t that the limit? And I just couldn’t get away for the last four hours. How’ve you been, honey? Did you have a good time? I hope so. Did they like the present I gave you?”

He rattled off these questions, to which she made brief and decidedly terse replies, all the time looking at him as much as to say, “Oh, Clyde, how can you treat me like this?”

But Clyde was so much interested in his own alibi, and how to convince Roberta of the truth of it, that neither before nor after slipping off his coat, muffler and gloves and smoothing back his hair, did he look at her directly, or even tenderly, or indeed do anything to demonstrate to her that he was truly delighted to see her again. On the contrary, he was so fidgety and in part flustered that despite his past professions and actions she could feel that apart from being moderately glad to see her again he was more concerned about himself and his own partially explained defection than he was about her. And although after a few moments he took her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers, still, as on Saturday, she could feel that he was only partially united to her in spirit. Other things⁠—the affairs that had kept him from her on Friday and tonight⁠—were disturbing his thoughts and hers.

She looked at him, not exactly believing and yet not entirely wishing to disbelieve him. He might have been at the Griffiths’, as he said, and they might have detained him. And yet he might not have, either. For she could not help recalling that on the previous Saturday he had said he had been there Friday and the paper on the other hand had stated that he was in Gloversville. But if she questioned him in regard to these things now, would he not get angry and lie to her still more? For after all she could not help thinking that apart from his love for her she had no real claim on him. But she could not possibly imagine that he could change so quickly.

“So that was why you didn’t come tonight, was it?” she asked, with more spirit and irritation than she had ever used with him before. “I thought you told me sure you wouldn’t let anything interfere,” she went on, a little heavily.

“Well, so I did,” he admitted. “And I wouldn’t have either, except for the letter I got. You know I wouldn’t let anyone but my uncle interfere, but I couldn’t turn them down when they asked me to come there on Christmas Day. It’s too important. It wouldn’t look right, would it, especially when you weren’t going to be here in the afternoon?”

The manner and tone in which he said this conveyed to Roberta more clearly than anything that he had ever said before how significant he considered this connection with his relatives to be and how unimportant anything she might value in regard to this relationship was to him. It came to her now that in spite of all his enthusiasm and demonstrativeness in the first stages of this affair, possibly she was much more trivial in his estimation than she had seemed to herself. And that meant that her dreams and sacrifices thus far had been in vain. She became frightened.

“Well, anyhow,” she went on dubiously in the face of this, “don’t you think you might have left a note here, Clyde, so I would have got it when I got in?” She asked this mildly, not wishing to irritate him too much.

“But didn’t I just tell you, honey, I didn’t expect to be so late. I thought the thing would all be over by six, anyhow.”

“Yes⁠—well⁠—anyhow⁠—I know⁠—but still⁠—”

Her face wore a puzzled, troubled, nervous look, in which was mingled fear, sorrow, depression, distrust, a trace of resentment and a trace of despair, all of which, coloring and animating her eyes, which were now fixed on him in round orblike solemnity, caused him to suffer from a sense of having misused and demeaned her not a little. And because her eyes seemed to advertise this, he flushed a dark red flush that colored deeply his naturally very pale cheeks. But without appearing to notice this or lay any stress on it in any way at the time, Roberta added after a moment: “I notice that The Star mentioned that Gloversville party Sunday, but it didn’t say anything about your cousins being over there. Were they?”

For the first time in all her questioning of him, she asked this as though she might possibly doubt him⁠—a development which Clyde had scarcely anticipated in connection with her up to this time, and more than anything else, it troubled and irritated him.

“Of course they were,” he replied falsely. “Why do you want to ask a thing like that when I told you they were?”

“Well,