"He'd ought to stay away; people are talking."
She turned on him defiantly. "What of it? What do I care? I'm lonesome. I want company. Mr. Barclay and I were good friends."
"You're my wife now."
"Your wife? Ha! ha! Your wife!" She laughed hysterically.
"Yes. Don't you love me any more, Alice?"
She said nothing.
"I've noticed a change, lately, and—I can't blame you none, but if you loved me just a little, if I had even that much to start on, I wouldn't mind. I'd take you away somewhere and try to make you love me more."
"You'd take me away, would you?" the woman cried, gaining confidence from his lack of heat. "Away, where I'd be all alone with you? Don't you see I'm dying of lonesomeness now? That's what's the matter. I'm half mad with the monotony. I want to see people, and live, and be amused. I'm young, and pretty, and men like me. You're old, McGill. You're old, and I'm young."
Her husband withered beneath her words; his whole big frame sagged together as if the life had ebbed out of it; he felt weary and sick and burned out. His brain held but one thought—Alice did not love him, because he was old.
"Don't go on this way," he said, finally, to check her. "I suppose it's true, but I've felt like a daddy and a mother to you, along with the other feeling, and I hoped you wouldn't notice it. I don't reckon any young man could care for you like that. You see, it's all the loves of my whole life wrapped up together, and I don't see, I don't see what we can do about it. We're married!" It was characteristic of him that he could devise no way out of the difficulty. A calamity had befallen them, and they must adjust themselves to it as best they could. In his eyes marriage was a holy thing, an institution of God, with which no human hands might trifle.