Fred lowered his collar and shook the snow from his shoulders. “Oh, I don’t mean on the contract particularly. I congratulate you on what you can do, Thea, and on all that lies behind what you do. On the life that’s led up to it, and on being able to care so much. That, after all, is the unusual thing.”
She looked at him sharply, with a certain apprehension. “Care? Why shouldn’t I care? If I didn’t, I’d be in a bad way. What else have I got?” She stopped with a challenging interrogation, but Ottenburg did not reply. “You mean,” she persisted, “that you don’t care as much as you used to?”
“I care about your success, of course.” Fred fell into a slower pace. Thea felt at once that he was talking seriously and had dropped the tone of half-ironical exaggeration he had used with her of late years. “And I’m grateful to you for what you demand from yourself, when you might get off so easily. You demand more and more all the time, and you’ll do more and more. One is grateful to anybody for that; it makes life in general a little less sordid. But as a matter of fact, I’m not much interested in how anybody sings anything.”
“That’s too bad of you, when I’m just beginning to see what is worth doing, and how I want to do it!” Thea spoke in an injured tone.
“That’s what I congratulate you on. That’s the great difference between your kind and the rest of us. It’s how long you’re able to keep it up that tells the story. When you needed enthusiasm from the outside, I was able to give it to you. Now you must let me withdraw.”
“I’m not tying you, am I?” she flashed out. “But withdraw to what? What do you want?”
Fred shrugged. “I might ask you, What have I got? I want things that wouldn’t interest you; that you probably wouldn’t understand. For one thing, I want a son to bring up.”
“I can understand that. It seems to me reasonable. Have you also found somebody you want to marry?”
“Not particularly.” They turned another curve, which brought the wind to their backs, and they walked on in comparative calm, with the snow blowing past them. “It’s not your fault, Thea, but I’ve had you too much in my mind. I’ve not given myself a fair chance in other directions. I was in Rome when you and Nordquist were there. If that had kept up, it might have cured me.”
“It might have cured a good many things,” remarked Thea grimly.