“But it’s interesting; awfully interesting.”
“Written, I assure you,” laughed Trenton, “by a remarkable woman!”
III
The unhappy marriages of which Grace had known had failed for obvious reasons, but Trenton’s case was fascinating in its subtleties. He spoke of his wife as a man might speak of a woman he admired in a detached sort of way without really knowing her. In spite of his amiable attitude toward Mrs. Trenton, Grace found herself instantly his partisan; she was sure his failure as he called it was his wife’s fault. She greatly disliked this woman she had never seen. She started and flushed when he said abruptly, almost as though he had read her thoughts:
“You’re getting ready to pity me—but don’t do it! It’s something in me that’s wrong. We don’t quarrel and throw dishes across the table or call each other names. We respect each other tremendously. It isn’t even one of these triangular affairs,—another man or woman. When we meet now and then we talk quite sanely and sensibly of the news of the day and the arts and sciences, as two strangers might talk in a smoking car. The trouble may lie right there. A man and wife must be necessary to each other to make a perfect marriage and we are not. For seven or eight years we’ve mostly gone our separate ways. She has her own interests, plenty of them. If I tell her I’m going to Hong Kong to do a job and ask her to go along she’ll say that she doesn’t think it would amuse her. She’ll go to Paris and stay till I come back. All cheerful, you understand; no row! Mrs. Trenton’s quite able to do as she pleases,—as to money, I mean,—independently of me. And she knows people everywhere and they like to have her around. I like having her around myself!”
“Perhaps one of these days everything will come right,” said Grace.
“Possibly,” he said. “But that’s enough of me. Let’s talk about you a little.”
He drew her out as to her experiences at the university but when these were exhausted he told her something of his own history. He had been thrown upon the world at an early age, and, not without difficulty, had worked his way through a technical school. His profession had carried him to every part of the world. He told amusing stories of the reaction of remote foreign peoples to the magic of modern machinery. No other man had ever interested Grace half so much. Trenton was like a pilgrim from another and larger world; she was fascinated by the cosmopolitan fashion in which he changed the scene of his adventures from China to South Africa and from South America to far-flung islands whose very names were touched with the glamour of romance. Some of his journeys had been merely pleasure excursions; he got restless sometimes, he said, and had to go somewhere; but chiefly he had traveled to sell or to install machinery, or to work out mechanical problems under new and difficult conditions. There was no conceit in him—a vein of self-mockery ran through most of his talk. He made light of the perplexities and dangers he had encountered; there was no fun, he said, in the performance of easy tasks. He knew usually when he was employed that his services were sought in the hope that he might be able to solve riddles which other very capable persons had given up.
Grace studied him at leisure through his desultory monologue, interrupting only to ask questions to keep him assured of her interest. Her mind turned back repeatedly to what he had said of his wife. She was quite sure that Mrs. Trenton didn’t appreciate her husband’s fine qualities. He was a man of genius, and as such probably wasn’t always easy to understand; but it was Mrs. Trenton’s business, the girl reflected, to learn to understand him, to seek ways of making him happy. She was more and more struck by his seeming indifference to most things, even to is own achievements. Her imagination played upon him with girlish romanticism. He ought to be aroused, awakened; he deserved to be loved, to have the companionship he craved. And yet from the manner in which he spoke of his wife it was a serious question whether he didn’t love her. Whether the unknown woman loved him was another question that kept thrusting itself into her thoughts.
As he rambled on through the hour they were alone he played fitfully with the end of a gold locket which he carried on his watch chain. He would draw this from his right hand waistcoat pocket, seemingly unconscious of what he was doing, and hold it in his hand or smooth it caressingly. She speculated as to whether it did not contain a picture of Mrs. Trenton; she even considered asking him to let her see it.