The recoil that shook Adriance was strong as physical sickness. Like a woman, he was glad of the darkness.
Divorce between Elsie and himself? He could have laughed at the coarse absurdity of the idea, if it had not been for his disgust and desire to get away from the subject.
"We shall miss the boat," he said curtly. "Thank you, Fred, but that is all nonsense. The truth of the matter is that you are sick—and no wonder! Come, man, pull yourself up and you'll get past all this. Why, you are only twenty-eight; start over again here! Drop everything and come home with Elsie and me for a while. You saw how we live; it isn't much, perhaps, but you would get back your health. And we can force Mrs. Masterson to let you have Holly part of the time, at least."
"I saw the way you live," Masterson repeated. "Yes. And you see the way I live. I'm no preacher, but measure them up and choose if ever you feel discontented, Tony. As for taking me home, neither of us could stand it. I drink all day to keep myself merry enough to stand that restaurant, and take morphine at night to keep myself asleep. No, we will not talk about it. I must put this through in my own way, and then leave this part of the earth. I can drop all this at once when I am ready. I am no weakling physically."
The two wanted back to the car. Just before they reached it, Masterson closed the discussion.
"Think over what I've told you. You can't love your wife any more than I did Lucille." He shivered in the damp air, drawing his fur-lined coat closer about him. "I couldn't keep her, though I tried hard, at first. Wish you better luck."
It was three o'clock in the morning when Adriance slipped his key into the clumsy old lock of his house-door, while Elsie perched herself on the railing of the porch. Within they heard his dog barking boisterous welcome.
"Up to work at seven," he commented, as the clock struck simultaneously with the opening of the door. But there was no complaint in his tone. He threw his arm around Elsie and drew her across the threshold with a deep breath of relief.
"Let me light the lamp," she offered.
"I'll light it." He held her closer. "Wait a moment; the hearth gives glow enough. I have been thinking—if it should be a boy, I would like to call our son after that jolly old ancestor of yours: the black-sloop man, Martin Galvez."