“What is there about him so attractive?” Marian reflected, not for the first time.
He was not handsome, he was very untidy, he was casual, rude, distrait; a slender, wiry red-haired fellow of thirty-five, with a sharp-featured, rather pale, freckled face and restless, bright brown eyes.
At last he looked up at his wife, still frowning.
“Don’t be hurt!” he said “And try to understand!”
“Of course I will, Andy.”
“I’ve been walking,” he went on, “for hours—almost all day—thinking it out. This lecture that I’m to give, you know, to-morrow—”
“Oh, yes—before the Moral Courage Club.”
“I’d made fairly comprehensive notes of what I was going to say; but it’s been growing on me, every day, how weak and cowardly it is—how evasive. I hadn’t dared to be frank, I never have dared. I’ve compromised. I’ve lied. I’ve kept it up for ten years—ten years to-day, Marian!”
“Kept up what?” she asked, startled.
“This damnable hypocrisy!” he cried. “This wretched, revolting pretense! Do you know that it’s the anniversary to-night of that horrible ceremony—that perjury—that mockery we called our marriage?”