Mauney shook his head slowly while the muscles of his jaw hardened. “I’m far from being discouraged,” he said quietly. “I’ve started in on this work, and I’m going to stay with it.”
There, in that simple statement of his, Freda felt that his whole reliable character showed itself. Born of parents who had dug their living out of the ground, Mauney would persist in whatever task he undertook—obdurate, stubborn, steadfast and gloriously reliable.
They had supper at the Chalet and then returned to their nook under the trees. Freda had, by this time, attuned herself to the quiet and dispirited mood which seemed to possess Mauney. It would pass, she felt, but it was lasting unusually long.
“I couldn’t come to see you this week,” he said awkwardly. “I got a letter from the nurse at Rockland, and Max is dying.”
“Dying!” she exclaimed.
He nodded his head slowly several times. That was all the explanation he could give for his conduct during the past week, and it had taken him all day to give it. They drove home in the twilight and later, on the verandah at MacDowell’s, as he was bidding her good-night, the illumination of a red moon shining through a hot, smoky, sky showed him her face. Never would he forget the quietness of that moment, disturbed only by the wind in the pines, as he looked down upon her features, and suffered to clasp the vision in his arms. But he did not.
And when he had gone, Freda, unable to understand his restraint, suffered, too. Idealization was a bogey cast out of heaven years ago. She coveted actuality and the simple, sweet rewards of affection, and, in a pang of loneliness, she wished that Mauney was less immovable and self-contained and reliable.