Larry’s idea now was to let Mary-Clare break herself with the Forest as audience. He wasn’t going to do anything. No, not he! Living outside his home would set tongues wagging. All right, let Mary-Clare stop their wagging.
There was always, with Larry, this feeling of hot impotence when he retreated from Mary-Clare. For so vital and high-strung a woman, Mary-Clare could at critical moments be absolutely negative, to all appearances. Where another might show weakness or violence, she seemed to close all the windows and doors of her being, leaving her attacker in the outer darkness with nothing to strike at; no ear to assail. It was maddening to one of Larry’s type.
So had Mary-Clare just now done. After asking him about the letters, she had withdrawn, but in the isolation where Larry was left he could almost hear the terrific truths he guiltily knew he deserved, hurled at him, but which his wife did not utter. Well, two could play at her game.
And in this mood he reached Maclin; accepted a cigar and stretched his feet toward the fire in his owner’s office.
Maclin was in a humanly soothing mood. He fairly 89 crooned over Larry and could tell to a nicety the workings of his mind.
He puffed and puffed at his enormous cigar; he was almost hidden from sight in the smoke but his words oozed forth as if they were cutting through a soft, thick substance.
“Now, Larry,” he said; “don’t make a mistake. Some women don’t have weak spots, they have knots––weak ends tied together, so to speak. The cold, calculating breed––and your wife, no offence intended, is mighty chilly––can’t be broken, as you intimate, but they can be untied and”––Maclin was pleased with his picturesque figures of speech––“left dangling.”
This was amusing. Both men guffawed.
“Do you know, Rivers”––Maclin suddenly relapsed into seriousness––“it was a darned funny thing that a girl like your wife should fall into your open mouth, marry you off-hand, as one might say. Mighty funny, when you come to think of it, that your old man should let her––knowing all he knew and seeming to set such a store by the girl.”
Larry winced and felt the lash on his back. So long had that lash hung unused that the stroke now made him cringe.