“Mauney,” she said, seating herself with all appearance of complacency in a deep chair. “Let’s not insist on rebelling against what is inevitable.”
“But why should it be inevitable?” he asked. “I think I am sufficiently intelligent to grasp any reasonable explanation.”
He walked quickly towards her. “Look here,” he said, folding his arms on his chest and fastening her gaze, “if you don’t love Courtney, why the devil will you marry him?”
For a moment her dark eyes seemed to expand with her effort to capture a fit reply. Then she said, slowly and softly, as if, in any event, her realistic nature could find some solace in things as they are: “I am going to marry him because he loves me, and because I was weak enough to give myself to him.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Gypsies’ Fire.
Like a flash the situation dawned on Mauney. It dawned so flashingly that he tried to hide from it all afternoon. Her impetuous nature! His own tardiness and his own misinterpreted duty to Maxwell Lee. While he had maintained loyalty to Lee, this woman, this Freda, whose very likeness had been burned into his soul, had been slipping from his fingers. And now, torn between self-blame and an effort to excuse her most recent fault, he began to recognize just how ultimate and hopeless the whole matter was.
He met Mr. Fitch, of Lantern Marsh, on the street and accepted a ride to the farm with him. Perhaps he would never have thought of going home had Fitch not suggested it. There was nothing at Lantern Marsh to go for, either. But he craved solitude, and at least his old home would afford him that. The old swamp would somehow understand him, he felt. There would be a queer kind of sympathy in that old swamp.
When he reached home he found a visitor, one he had almost forgotten and one whom he was not overjoyed at meeting in his present chaotic mood. David McBratney had been in Merlton for eight years and was only now, after so long an absence, refreshing his acquaintance with the people of his youth. It was fortunate, according to Dave, that Mauney had just happened in when he was there. But Mauney felt that the most unfortunate fact in the world was that he should have to converse politely with any one to-night. They were all just ready to sit down at the supper table—William with his shirt sleeves rolled up on his sun-burned arms, Evelyn placing her two red-faced little boys on stools, and McBratney being shown a place beside Mauney on the opposite side. When they were seated, William, carving knife in one hand and a long, serving fork in the other, looked up lazily from the crisply-browned roast on the platter toward his wife and made an awkward, snuffling sound. Mrs. Bard caught the hint.