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.She expects a man to be a saint.Why, I don’t even smoke in the house—and she doesn’t dream I’d ever swear, under any circumstances.“Why, Kent, a fellow’s got to go to town and turn himself loose sometimes, when he lives in a rarified atmosphere of refined morality, and listens to Songs Without Words and weepy classics on the violin, and never a thing to make your feet tingle.She doesn’t believe in public dances, either.Nor cards.She reads ‘The Ring and the Book’ evenings, and wants to discuss it and read passages of it to me.I used to take some interest in those things, and she doesn’t seem to see I’ve changed.Why, hang it, Kent, Cold Spring Coulee’s no place for Browning—he doesn’t fit in.All that sort of thing is a thousand miles behind me—and I’ve got to—” He stopped short and brooded, his eyes upon the dank sawdust at his feet.“I’m a beast,” he repeated rather lugubriously.“She’s an angel—an Eastern-bred angel.And let me tell you, Kent, all that’s pretty hard to live up to!”Kent looked down at him meditatively, wondering if there was not a good deal of truth and justice in Manley’s argument.But his sympathies had already gone to the other side, and Kent was not the man to make an emotional pendulum of himself.“Well, what you going to do about it?” he asked, after a short silence.For answer Manley rose to his feet with a certain air of determination, which flamed up oddly above his general weakness, like the last sputter of a candle burned down.“I’m going over and take my medicine—face the music,” he said almost sullenly.“She’s too good for me—I always knew it.And I haven’t treated her right—I’ve left her out there alone too much.But she wouldn’t come to town with me—she said she couldn’t endure the sight of it.What could I do? I couldn’t stay out there all the time; there were times when I had to come.She didn’t seem to mind staying alone.She never objected.She was always sweet and good-natured—and shut up inside of herself.She just gives you what she pleases of her mind, and the rest she hides—”Kent laughed suddenly.“You married men sure do have all kinds of trouble,” he remarked.“A fellow like me can go on a jamboree anytime he likes, and as long as he likes, and it don’t concern anybody but himself—and maybe the man he’s working for; and look at you, scared plumb silly thinking of what your wife’s going to say about it.If you ask me, I’m going to trot alone; I’d rather be lonesome than good, any old time.”That, however, did not tend to raise Manley’s spirits any.He entered the hotel with visible reluctance, looked into the parlor, and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw that it was empty, wavered at the foot of the steep, narrow stairs, and retreated to the dining room, with Kent at his heels knowing that the matter had passed quite beyond his help or hindrance and had entered that mysterious realm of matrimony where no unwedded man or woman may follow and yet is curious enough to linger.Just inside the door Manley stopped so suddenly that Kent bumped against him.Val, sweet and calm and cool, was sitting just where the smoke-dimmed sunlight poured in through a window upon her, and a breeze came with it and stirred her hair.She had those purple shadows under her eyes which betray us after long, sleepless hours when we live with our troubles and the world dreams around us; she had no color at all in her cheeks, and she had that aloofness of manner which Manley, in his outburst, had described as being shut up inside herself.She glanced up at them, just as she would have done had they both been strangers, and went on sugaring her coffee with a dainty exactness which, under the circumstances, seemed altogether too elaborate to be unconscious.“Good morning,” she greeted them quietly.“I think we must be the laziest people in town; at any rate, we seem to be the latest risers.”Kent stared at her frankly, so that she flushed a little under the scrutiny.Manley consciously avoided looking at her, and muttered something unintelligible while he pulled out a chair three places distant from her.Val stole a sidelong, measuring look at her husband while she took a sip of coffee, and then her eyes turned upon Kent.More than ever, it seemed to him, they resembled the eyes of a lioness watching you quietly from the corner of her cage.You could look at them, but you could not look into them.Always they met your gaze with a baffling veil of inscrutability.But they were darker than the eyes of a lioness; they were human eyes; woman eyes—alluring eyes.She did not say a word, and, after a brief stare which might have meant almost anything, she turned to her plate of toast and broke away the burned edges of a slice and nibbled at the passable center as if she had no trouble beyond a rather unsatisfactory breakfast.It was foolish, it was childish for three people who knew one another very well, to sit and pretend to eat, and to speak no word; so Kent thought, and tried to break the silence with some remark which would not sound constrained.“It’s going to storm,” he flung into the silence, like chucking a rock into a pond.“Do you think so?” Val asked languidly, just grazing him with a glance, in that inattentive way she sometimes had.“Are you going out home—or to what’s left of it—today, Manley?” She did not look at him at all, Kent observed.“I don’t know—I’ll have to hire a team—I’ll see what—”“Mrs.Hawley thinks we ought to stay here for a few days—or that I ought—while you make arrangements for building a new stable, and all that.”“If you want to stay,” Manley agreed rather eagerly, “why, of course, you can.There’s nothing out there to—”“Oh, it doesn’t matter in the slightest degree where I stay.I only mentioned it because I promised her I would speak to you about it.” There was more than languor in her tone.“They’re going to start the fireworks pretty quick,” Kent mentally diagnosed the situation and rose hurriedly.“Well, I’ve got to hunt a horse, myself, and pull out for the Wishbone,” he explained gratuitously.“Ought to ’ve gone last night.Goodbye.” He closed the door behind him and shrugged his shoulders.“Now they can fight it out,” he told himself.“Glad I ain’t a married man!”However, they did not fight it out then.Kent had no more than reached the office when Val rose, hoped that Manley would please excuse her, and left the room also.Manley heard her go upstairs, found out from Arline what was the number of Val’s room, and followed her.The door was locked, but when he rapped upon it Val opened it an inch and held it so.“Val, let me in.I want to talk with you.I—God knows how sorry I am—”“If He does, that ought to be sufficient,” she answered coldly.“I don’t feel like talking now—especially upon the subject you would choose.You’re a man, supposedly.You must know what it is your duty to do.Please let us not discuss it—now or ever.”“But, Val—”“I don’t want to talk about it, I tell you! I won’t—I can’t.You must do without the conventional confession and absolution.You must have some sort of conscience—let that receive your penitence.” She started to close the door, but he caught it with his hand.“Val—do you hate me?”She looked at him for a moment, as if she were trying to decide
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