"It is good of you to come," she said, as she poured his coffee. "There are so few days left before you will have married a wife and cannot come. I shall miss you very much."
"Why do you persist in talking in that way?"
Fenton returned. "I'm not going out of the country or out of the world. You could not take a more absolute farewell if I were about to be cremated."
"You do not know," replied she, smiling. "However, I am glad you are to be married. It will do you good. You need a wife, if you do dread matrimony so much."
"It is abominable," he observed deliberately, "to talk as I do. Of course I do not mind what you choose to think of me; or rather I am sure you will not misunderstand."
"I do not," Mrs. Greyson interpolated significantly.
"But it seems a reflection upon Miss Caldwell," he continued, answering her interruption only by a grimace, "for me to discourse of marriage just as I do. It isn't because I'm not fond of her. It is my protest against the absurd and false way in which society regards marriage; in a word against marriage itself."
Mrs. Greyson understood Arthur Fenton as well as any woman can understand a man who is her friend. Her friendship softened the harshness of her judgments, but she could not be blind to his vanity, his constant efforts at self-deception, and so far as she was in possession of the facts, she reasoned correctly in regard to his approaching marriage.
"No," she said calmly, "it isn't even that. You talk partly for the sake of saying things that sound effective, and partly because you are morbid from over introspection. If you were vicious, I should say you did it as an atonement. Many people would not understand you, but as I do, it is harmless for you to talk to me."
"Introspective? Of course. Can any body help being that in this age? And as for being morbid—it all depends upon definitions. I try to be honest with myself."