Polder, with an obscure
sentence, followed her. A soft rain sounded on the porch roof; but there
was no wind; the night was warm.
Howat glanced at his watch, after a period of restful ease, and saw that
it was past ten. He moved resolutely outside. Mariana was banked with
cushions in the canvas swing, and Polder sat with his body extended, his
hands clasped behind his head, in a gloomy revery. The night,
apparently, had robbed her countenance of any bloom; more than once in
the past year Howat had seen her stamped with the premonitory scarring
of time. Polder rose as he approached, and Mariana struggled upright.
"Good night," she said ungraciously, to them both, and flickered away
through the dark. James Polder was savagely biting his lips; his hands,
the elder saw, were clenched. "Your wife," Howat proceeded, "how is
she?" Polder gazed at him stonily, without reply. "I asked after your
wife," Howat repeated irritably. "No," the other at last said, "you
reminded me of her. I suppose you are right." He turned and walked
abruptly from the porch, into the slowly dropping rain.
XXXIII
The road to Myrtle Forge mounted between rolling cultivated fields, the
scattered, stone ruins of walls erected in the earliest iron days; and,
after a pastoral course, came to the Forge dwelling, its shuttered bulk
set in a tangle of bushes and rank grass.
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