Yes, this young Polder would stand
admirably firm. Mariana frowned at the cobalt smoke of her cigarette. "I
am in a very bad temper," she told them. "No one for a minute thinks of
what my feeling may be. You are both entirely concerned with your own
nice sense of virtue."
"Not at all, but of your future," Howat Penny asserted.
Her lower lip assumed the contempt of which it was pre-eminently
capable. She made no immediate reply. James Polder's fingers absently
clasped the goblet before him; he drew it toward his plate, tipped the
thick liquid it contained. "Just what do you recommend me to do?"
Mariana challenged Howat. "Go through with a lifeful of winters like the
last! Marry another Sam Lewis! I am not celebrated for reliability; it
is only with Jimmy--" she broke off. Howat Penny recalled her callous
expression, photographed in Egyptian dress at a period ball, her
description of the hard riding and reckless parties of the transplanted
English colonies in the south.
Polder lifted the goblet to his lips, but set it back untasted. Howat
looked away from Mariana's scornful interrogation, unable to reply.
Finally, "I am old, as you once reminded me," he stated; "I'm out of my
time, don't understand, I can only remember, and remembering isn't any
longer of use.
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