He seemed to feel that this wasn't a very strong line to take and the next moment he conceded as much.
"But suppose they were right," he flashed round at her. "Am I not still entitled to my choice? I've lived the greater part of my life. I've pulled my weight in the boat. It should be for me to choose whether I spend the life I have left in two years or in twenty. If they want to call that suicide, let them. I've no religion that's real enough to make a valid argument against my right to extinguish myself if I choose."
She wasn't shocked. It was characteristic of their talks together, this free range among ethical abstractions, especially on his part.
"You act on the other theory though," she pointed out to him. "Think of the people you've patched together just so that they can live at most another wretched year or two."
"That's a different thing," he said. "Or rather it comes to the same thing. The question of shortening one's life is one that nobody has a right to decide except for himself."
Then he asked abruptly. "What sort of person is Maxfield Ware?"
She attempted no palliations here.
"He kissed me last night," she said, "taking his cigar out of his mouth for the purpose. He's not a sort of person I can endure or manage. Paula hates him as much as I do, but she can manage him. He'd never try to kiss her like that."
"Oh, God!" cried John. "It's intolerable." He flung away his stick, got to his feet and walked to the edge of the bluff. "Think of her working, traveling,—living almost,—with a man like that! You say she can manage him; that she can prevent him from trying to make love to her. Well, what does that mean, if you're right, but that she—understands him; his talk; his ideas; his point of view. You can't make yourself intelligible to a man like that; she can. It's defilement to meet his mind anywhere—any angle of it. She's given him carte blanche, she says, to manage the publicity for her. Do you realize what that means? He's licensed to try to make the public believe anything that he thinks would heighten their interest in her. That she dresses indecently; that she's a frivolous extravagant fool; that she has lovers. You know how that game is played."
Mary did know. She ran over a list of the great names and opposite every one of them there sprang into her mind the particular bit of vulgar réclame that had been in its day some press agent's masterpiece. She was able further to see that Paula would regard the moves of this game with a large-minded tolerance which would be incomprehensible to John. After all, that was the way to take it. If you were a real luminary, not just a blank white surface, all the mud that Mr. Maxfield Ware could splash wouldn't matter. You burnt it off. None of those great names was soiled.