He slept in the guest-chamber, and at times during the night the child cried in Marcia's room and waked him; and then he thought he heard a sound of sobbing which was not the child's. In the morning, when he came down to breakfast, Marcia met him with swollen eyes.
“Bartley,” she said tremulously, “I wish you would tell me how you felt justified in writing out Mr. Kinney's life in that way.”
“My dear,” said Bartley, with perfect amiability, for he had slept off his anger, and he really felt sorry to see her so unhappy, “I would tell you almost anything you want on any other subject; but I think we had better remand that one to the safety of silence, and go upon the general supposition that I know what I'm about.”
“I can't, Bartley!”
“Can't you? Well, that's a pity.” He pulled his chair to the breakfast-table. “It seems to me that girl's imagination always fails her on Mondays. Can she never give us anything but hash and corn-bread when she's going to wash? However, the coffee's good. I suppose you made it?”
“Bartley!” persisted Marcia, “I want to believe in everything you do,—I want to be proud of it—”
“That will be difficult,” suggested Bartley, with an air of thoughtful impartiality, “for the wife of a newspaper man.”
“No, no! It needn't be! It mustn't be! If you will only tell me—” She stopped, as if she feared to repeat her offence.
Bartley leaned back in his chair and looked at her intense face with a smile. “Tell you that in some way I had Kinney's authority to use his facts? Well, I should have done that yesterday if you had let me. In the first place, Kinney's the most helpless ass in the world. He could never have used his own facts. In the second place, there was hardly anything in his rigmarole the other day that he hadn't told me down there in the lumber camp, with full authority to use it in any way I liked; and I don't see how he could revoke that authority. That's the way I reasoned about it.”
“I see,—I see!” said Marcia, with humble eagerness.