“I don’t doubt it,” he nodded. “But I wish they’d get over it. They seem to think I’m a high-brow, or something just as bad. Inadvertently I heard a couple of the men discussing my book, knocking it to beat the deuce.”
“And do you actually care, Mauney Bard?” she asked in a surprised tone.
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I’ve always been damnably lonesome for pals, for good fellows, who, like Max Lee, could see the motive behind the act. Freda, you know the motive behind my book. You know it was merely a wish of mine to warm up the subject of history a little bit. Well, these chaps agreed that it was mere nonsense.”
“That,” sneered Freda, “was mere jealousy. They haven’t tried to write a book. If they had they’d be more lenient. But really,” she added, looking Mauney seriously in the eye, “I think you must be tired, for I never saw you so down in the mouth, before.”
She wanted to pillow his head in her lap, and tell him that his book was the best one ever written. She longed to comfort him and change his loneliness. There were great allowances, after all, which she would gladly make for him. She knew all about his life now. She knew him, too—just how stimulating a little praise was to him, just how diffident he was about himself, and how hard it was for anyone to reach his real open self. As she sat there beside him and watched his strong, splendid profile, while he gazed at the river, she knew that she could never pity him. He was too big and strong. To-day was but a passing mood in his strong life. Rather than comfort him she would prefer to cast her inmost self upon his support and be comforted. But he was too immovable either to come to her or to receive her.
“I’ve got a bone to pick, Mauney,” she said.
“All right. What is it?” he asked pleasantly.
“Can’t you imagine?”
“Possibly, but I’d prefer that you present the bone.”
“Why didn’t you call me up all week?”