"Orthodoxy! Orthodoxy!"
"Possibly. But orthodoxy is a fixed habit of mind. The average man and woman hug their orthodoxies and spit their venom on those that outrage them. How it may be some years hence, when this cure for senescence has become a commonplace, I do not pretend to say. But so it is today. Personally, no doubt, you would be indifferent, for you have a contemptuously independent mind. But your career and your usefulness would be at an end."
"And suppose I am quite indifferent to that?"
"Ah, but you are not. I will not say that I have killed Mary Ogden during this painful hour, for it is impossible to kill the dead, but I have exorcised her ghost. She will not come again. If you marry this young man it will be out of defiance, or possibly out of a mistaken consideration for him—although he will be an object for sympathy later on. And you will marry him as Marie Zattiany, without an illusion left in that clear brain of yours—from which the mists have been blown by the cold wind of truth. And in a year—if you can stand self-contempt and ineffable ennui so long—you will leave him, resume your present name—the name by which Europe knows you—and return to us. But it may be too late. Vienna would still be laughing. The Viennese are a light-hearted race, and a lax, but when they laugh they cease to take seriously the subject of that good-natured amusement.… It is not aesthetic, you know, it is not aesthetic. Are you really quite indifferent, Marie?"
She shrugged and rose. "It must be time for luncheon," she said. "It will no doubt be horrible, but at least we can have it in here. The public dining-room would be impossible. I will find Mr. Dinwiddie and ask him to order it."
LVI
When the men returned from their fishing trip at six o'clock they saw several of the women on the lake, but there was no one in the living-room. Clavering tapped at Mr. Dinwiddie's door, but as there was no answer, concluded that he and Mary had not yet returned from Huntersville. He was too desirous of a bath and clean clothes, however, to feel more than a fleeting disappointment, and it was not until his return to his room that he saw a letter lying on the table.
It was addressed in Mary's handwriting, and he stared at it in astonishment for a second, then tore it open. It was dated "Huntersvilie, Monday afternoon," and it read:
"Dear Lee: