"You may at any time tell Mrs. MacBirney anything I say. It is this: if I should ever find a woman to love, I expect to do the walking. Tell her that, will you? I respect Mrs. MacBirney very highly and admire her very much--is that clear? But that is far from outraging her feelings by coupling her name with mine or mine with hers. Don't do that. I will never forgive it." She had never seen him so angry.
He realized more than once during the long winter that the slighted woman had told him only the truth. But from her it was an impertinent truth. And it galled him to be forced to admit to the loose-thinking members of his own set what he felt toward Alice.
Meantime, he spent the whole winter at The Towers with Uncle John, the tireless Francis, and his own unruly thoughts. His time went to conferences with his city associates, infrequent inspections of the refineries, horseback rides over the winter landscape, and to winter sunsets watched alone from the great western windows.
In town Alice found Fritzie an admirable guide.
"I try," said Fritzie calmly, answering one of Alice's jests at her wide acquaintance, "to move with the best. I suppose in heaven we shall encounter all sorts. And if we don't cultivate the elect here we may never have another chance to."
"You are far-sighted, Fritzie dear," smiled Alice. "What I can't understand is, why you don't marry."
"I have too many rich relations. I couldn't marry anybody in their class. I should have to pick up with some wretched millionaire and be reduced to misery. The Lord deliver us from people that watch their incomes--they are the limit. And it must, I have always thought, be terrible, Alice, to live with a man that has made a million honestly. He would be so mean. Of course, we are mean, too; but happily a good part of our meannesses are underground--buried with our ancestors."
Fritzie's light words struck home with an unsuspected force. Alice knew Fritzie had no thought of painting MacBirney; it was only Alice herself who recognized her husband's portrait.
Fritzie certainly had, as she admitted, an appetite for the luxurious and even MacBirney liked her novel extravagances. In their few resting hours the two women talked of Second Lake. "Fritzie," said Alice one night when they were together before the fire, "the first time I met you, you said every one at Second Lake was contented, with two exceptions. You were one; who was the other?"
"Robert, dear. He is the most discontented mortal alive. Isn't it all a strange world?"