"Couldn't you say 'toward their children'?" I protested.
He brushed my interruption aside. "I don't care," he persisted, "how much a man loves a woman or how much a woman loves a man—the man who deserts his wife during her crucial hour and goes off on a lark to get out of the fuss, and the woman who names her firstborn son for any man except his father, may qualify in all the available moral tenets, but they certainly have slipped up somehow, mentally, in the Real Meaning of things. Thank God," he finished quickly, "that neither Harold Lennart nor Mary has failed the other like that—no matter what else happens." His face whitened. "I stayed with Harold Lennart the night little Harold was born," he whispered rather softly.
Before I could think of just the right thing to say, he jumped up awkwardly and strode over to the looking-glass, and puffed out his great chest and stood and stared at himself.
"I wish I had a son named Bertus Sagner," he said.
"It's all right, of course, to have him named after you," I laughed, "but you surely wouldn't choose to have him look like you, would you?"
He turned on me with absurd fierceness. "I wouldn't marry any woman who didn't love me enough to want her son to look like me!" he exclaimed.
I was still laughing as I picked up my hat. I was still laughing as I stumbled and fumbled down the long, black, steep stairs. Half an hour later in my pillows I was still laughing. But I did not get to sleep. My mind was too messy. After all, when you really come to think of it, a man's brain ought to be made up fresh and clean every night like a hotel bed. Sleep seems to be altogether too dainty a thing to nest in any brain that strange thoughts have rumpled. Always there must be the white sheet of peace edging the blanket of forgetfulness. And perhaps on one or two of life's wintrier nights some sort of spiritual comforter thrown over all.
It was almost a week before I saw any of the Lennarts again. Then, on a Saturday afternoon, as Sagner and I were lolling along the road toward town we met Lennart and "Little Sister" togged out in a lot of gorgeous golf duds. Lennart was delighted to see us, and "Little Sister" made Sagner get down on his knees and tie her shoe lacings twice. I escaped with the milder favor of a pat on the wrist.
"We're going out to the Golf Club," beamed Lennart, "to enter for the tournament."
"Oh," said Sagner, turning to join them. "Shall we find Mrs. Lennart out at the club? Is she going to play?"