“Oh, I know your doctrine,” said Halleck,
rising. “It’s horrible! How a
man with any kindness in his heart can harbor such
a cold-blooded philosophy I don’t understand.
I wish you joy of it. Good night,” he added,
gloomily, taking his hat from the table. “It
serves me right for coming to you with a matter that
I ought to have been man enough to keep to myself.”
Atherton followed him toward the door. “It
won’t do you any harm to consider your perplexity
in the light of my philosophy. An unhappy marriage
isn’t the only hell, nor the worst.”
Halleck turned. “What could be a worse
hell than marriage without love?” he demanded,
fiercely.
“Love without marriage,” said Atherton.
Halleck looked sharply at his friend. Then he
shrugged his shoulders as he turned again and swung
out of the door. “You’re too esoteric
for me. It’s quite time I was gone.”
The way through Clover Street was not the shortest
way home; but he climbed the hill and passed the little
house. He wished to rehabilitate in its pathetic
beauty the image which his friend’s conjectures
had jarred, distorted, insulted; and he lingered for
a moment before the door where this vision had claimed
his pity for anguish that no after serenity could
repudiate. The silence in which the house was
wrapped was like another fold of the mystery which
involved him. The night wind rose in a sudden
gust, and made the neighboring lamp flare, and his
shadow wavered across the pavement like the figure
of a drunken man. This, and not that other, was
the image which he saw.
“Of course,” said Marcia, when she and
Bartley recurred to the subject of her visit to Equity,
“I have always felt as if I should like to have
you with me, so as to keep people from talking, and
show that it’s all right between you and father.
But if you don’t wish to go, I can’t ask
it.”
“I understand what you mean, and I should like
to gratify you,” said Bartley. “Not
that I care a rap what all the people in Equity think.
I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll
go down there with you and hang round a day or two;
and then I’ll come after you, when your time’s
up, and stay a day or two there. I couldn’t
stand three weeks in Equity.”
In the end, he behaved very handsomely. He dressed
Flavia out to kill, as he said, in lace hoods and
embroidered long-clothes, for which he tossed over
half the ready-made stock of the great dry-goods stores;
and he made Marcia get herself a new suit throughout,
with a bonnet to match, which she thought she could
not afford, but he said he should manage it somehow.
In Equity he spared no pains to deepen the impression
of his success in Boston, and he was affable with
everybody. He hailed his friends across the street,
waving his hand to them, and shouting out a jolly greeting.
He visited the hotel office and the stores to meet
