“It’s just what you know,” he began slowly. “Only as every day goes by it seems to get worse. I’ve never told you much about my marriage. I’ve never told anybody. Many men make mistakes in choosing a wife and find out, and say to themselves early in the game, that they have made a mistake and must abide by it. I don’t think I’m weaker than they are, but somehow——”
He stopped and looked at the moving tip of his cane. She said nothing, and after taking a deep breath he went on.
“I knew all about her when I married her. I was young, but I wasn’t a green fool. Only I didn’t seem to realize, I didn’t guess, I didn’t dream, that she was going to stay the way she was. I seemed to be at the beginning of a sort of experiment that I was sure was going to turn out well. I didn’t love her, but I liked her well enough, and I was going to try my best to have things go smoothly and make her happy. When she was my wife, when I’d try to make everything as comfortable and pleasant as I could, then I expected she’d—she’d—be more like the women men love, and even if they don’t love, manage to get on with. But it didn’t seem to go well even in the beginning, and now it’s got worse and worse. Perhaps it’s my fault. I’m not one of those fellows who can read a woman like a book. When a person tells me a thing, I think they mean it; I’m not looking into them to see if they mean just the opposite.”
He stopped again and struck lightly at a lump of earth with his cane. He had pushed his hat back from his forehead and his face bore an expression of affected, boyish nonchalance which was extremely pathetic to Rose.
“Maybe there are men who could stand it all right. She’s very nice part of the time. She’s a first-class housekeeper. I give her two hundred dollars a month, and on that little bit she runs the flat beautifully. And she’s quiet. She doesn’t want to be out all the time, the way some women do. She’s as domestic as possible, and she’s been very decent and pleasant since I came back. The way she was treated over the ball would have r’iled any woman. I didn’t tell you about that—it’s a mean story—but she got no invitation and was angry and flared up. We had a sort of an uncomfortable interview, and—and—that was the reason I went to Antelope. I didn’t think I’d ever go back to her then. I was pretty sore over it. But—” he paused, knocking the lump of clay into dust, “I thought afterward it was the right thing to do. I’d married her, you see.”
Rose did not speak, and after a moment he said in a low voice,
“But it’s—it’s—awfully hard to live with a person you don’t get on with. And it’s the sort of thing that goes on and on and on. There isn’t any end; there isn’t any way out.”
Once more he stopped, this time clearing his throat. He cleared it twice, and then said,
“I oughtn’t to say this. I oughtn’t to complain. I know I’m a chump and a coward to talk this way to you, but—” he dropped his voice to a note of low, inward communing, and said, “it’s so hopeless. I can’t see what to do.”
He leaned forward and rested his forehead on the head of his cane, hiding his face from her. The silence between them vibrated with the huskiness of his voice, the man’s voice, the voice of power and protection, roughened with the pain he was unused to and did not know how to bear.