"You can't deny it! You're tired of me because I'm older than you!"
And he said, between his teeth, "If you were old enough to have any sense, I wouldn't be tired of you."
She gave a cry; then stood, the back of her hand against her lips, her eyes wide with terror.
Maurice threw down a book he had been trying to read, got up, plunged into his overcoat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and, without a word, walked out of the room. A moment later the front door banged behind him. Eleanor, alone, stood perfectly still; she had said foolish things like that many times; she rather liked to say them! But she had not believed them; now, her own words were a boomerang,--they seemed to strike her in the face! _He was tired of her._ Instantly she was alert! What must she do? She sat down, tense with thought; first of all, she must be sweet to him; she mustn't be cross; then she must try (Mrs. Newbolt had told her so!) to "entertain" him. "I'll read things, and talk to him the way Mrs. Davis does!" She must sew on his buttons, and scold poor old O'Brien.... With just this same silent determination she had hurried to act that night on the mountain!
But while she was sitting there in their cheerless room, planning and planning!--Maurice was out, wandering about in the gray afternoon. It had begun to snow, in a fitful, irritating way--little gritty pellets that blew into his face. He had nowhere to go--four o'clock is a dead time to drop in on people! He had nothing to do, and nothing to think of--except the foolish, middle-aged woman, stating, in their dreary third-floor front, an undeniable fact--he was tired of her! Walking aimlessly about in the cold, he said to himself, dully, "Why _was_ I such an idiot as to marry her?" He was old enough to curse himself for his folly, but he was young enough to suffer, agonies of mortification, and to pity himself, too; pity himself for the mere physical discomfort of his life: the boarding-house table, with its uninteresting food; the worn shirt cuff which was scratching his wrist; and he pitied himself for his spiritual discomfort--when Eleanor called him "darling" at the dinner table, or exhibited her jealousy before people! "They're sorry for me--confound 'em!" he thought.... Yet how trivial the cuff was, or even--yes, even the impertinence which was "sorry" for him!--how unimportant, when compared to a ring of braided grass, and the smell of locust blossoms, and a lovely voice, rising and falling: