He unfolded a paper, but it drooped on his
knees, slid, finally, to the floor. Then Mariana appeared, walked
swiftly, without a word, through the room, and vanished upstairs. Not
even a civil period at the end of the evening. After another, long wait
James Polder entered. The latter stood uneasily by the table, with a
furrowed brow, a ridiculous, twitching mouth.
Polder went out into the dining room; where, through the doorway, Howat
Penny could see him hovering over the silver basket of oranges, placed
upon the sideboard. "If you don't mind," he called back, and there were
a rattle of knives, a thin ring of glass. The light was dim beyond, and
he stood in the doorway with the brandy decanter and orange juice. He
drained the mixture and leaned, absorbed, against the woodwork. "This is
a hell of a world!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Everything worth having is
fenced off. A woman won't understand. Does any one suppose that I don't
want Mariana! It's the responsibility. She's right--I am afraid of it.
And she laughed at me. Nothing cowardly in her," his voice deepened.
"It is ignorance," Howat stated.
"I thought so, for a minute; you are wrong. She's had more experience
than we'd get in a thousand years. The life she knows would fix that.
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