For a month Stefan brooded. He hung about the house, dabbled at a little work, and returned, all without signs of life or interest. He was kind to Mary, more considerate than he used to be, but she would have given all his inanimate, painstaking politeness for an hour of his old, gay thoughtlessness. They had reached the stage of marriage in which, all being explained and understood, there seems nothing to hope for. Alone together they were silent, for there was nothing to say. Each condoned but could not comfort the other. Stefan felt that his marriage had been a mistake, that he, a living thing, had tied about his neck a dead mass of institutions, customs and obligations which would slowly crush his life out. “I am twenty-seven,” he said to himself, “and my life is over.” He did not blame Mary, but himself.
She, on the other hand, felt she had married a man outside the pale of ordinary humanity, and that though she still loved him, she could no longer expect happiness through him. “I am twenty-five,” she thought, “and my personal life is over. I can be happy now only in my children.” As those were assured her, she never thought of regretting her marriage, but only deplored the loss of her dream. Nor did she judge Stefan. She understood the wild risk she had run in marrying a man of whom she knew nothing. “He is as he is,” she thought; “neither of us is to blame.” Lonely and grieved, she turned for companionship to her writing, and began a series of fairy tales which she had long planned for very young children. The first instalment of her serial was out, charmingly illustrated; she had felt rather proud on seeing her name, for the first time, on the cover of a magazine. She engaged a young girl from the village to take Elliston for his daily outings, and settled down to a routine of work, small social relaxations, and morning and evening care of the baby. The daily facts of life were pleasant to Mary; if some hurt or disappointed, her balanced nature swung readily to assuage itself with others. She honestly believed she felt more deeply than her husband, and perhaps she did, but she was not of the kind whom life can break. Stefan might dash himself to exhaustion against a rock round which Mary would find a smooth channel.
While her work progressed, Stefan's remained at a standstill. Disillusioned with his marriage and with his whole way of life he fretted himself from his old sure confidence to a mood of despair. Their friends bored him, his studio like his house became a cage. New York appeared in her old guise of mammoth materialist, but now he had no heart to satirize her dishonor. He wanted only to be gone, but told himself that in common decency he must remain with Mary till her child was born. He longed for even the superficial thrill of Felicity's presence, but she still lingered in the South. So fretting, he tossed himself against the bars through the long snows of an unusually severe March, until April broke the frost, and the road to the Byrdsnest became a morass of running mud.
In the last two weeks Stefan had begun a portrait of Constance, but without enthusiasm. She was a fidgety sitter, and was moreover so busy with her suffrage work that she could never be relied on for more than an hour at a time. After a few of these fragmentary sittings his ragged nerves gave out completely.
“It's utterly useless, Constance!” he exclaimed, throwing down his pallette and brushes, as the telephone interrupted them for the third time in less than an hour. “I can't paint in a suffrage office. This is a studio, not the Club's headquarters. If you can't shut these people off and sit rationally, please don't trouble to come again.”
“I know, my dear boy, it's abominable, but what can I do? Our bill has passed the Legislature; until it is submitted next year I can't be my own or Theodore's, much less yours. As for you, you look a rag. This winter has about made me hate my country. I don't wonder you long for France.”
Her eyes narrowed at him, she dangled her beads reflectively, and perched on the throne again without attempting to resume her pose. “My dear boy,” she said suddenly, “why stay here and be eaten by devils—why not fly from them?”
“I wish to God I could,” he groaned.
“You can. Mary was in to see our shop yesterday; she looked dragged. You are both nervous. Do what I have always done—take a holiday from each other. There's nothing like it as a tonic for love.”
“Do you really think she wouldn't mind?” he exclaimed eagerly. “You know she—she isn't very well.”