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182 Arthur Orton's Career
" In what way? " she asked slowly as she
continued to study him curiously.
"I've kept still about it for a long time;
always I've had a natural hesitation about
speaking about it, but I can't help breaking
out and down at last—with his coming
here, with your going to see him to-night."
"Of course I shall see him, since we shall
be at the dinner."
"I'd no idea of saying anything any
more now than I have before, but therehave
been several last straws, and this is
the last of the last. I've got to speak, if
even in a way to defend myself."
"Defend yourself?" she repeated questioningly.
"Don't you imagine that I must have
been thinking what you must have been
thinking? Perhaps you did not know that
I knew. I did. Long ago, just after we
were engaged, Mrs. Thurlow told me."
"What?"
"What your mother told her. That
Arthur Orton had wanted to marry you
and that you had refused him."
"And that," she said slowly, "is what
Mrs. Thurlow told you and that is what
is troubling you? "
"Yes. This isn't the first time. I've
had the trouble of it always. Remembering
what he might have given you and
what I haven't, and perhaps your regretting
what you might have had."
She was about to speak but he went on
before she could begin:
"A man must expect to have his poorer
self compared with a possible better, even
with an ideal best. However, there is a
shadowy indefiniteness in that which is
not so disturbing. The man flatters himself
that there may be some mistake. But,
hang it, Marian, to know that one is being
tried in the balance continually against—
something, somebody actual, and found
wanting "
He paused, making a gesture of despair
which, however, in its very exaggeration
betokened a consciousness of a quality of
humor in the position.
"So," she said, speaking as if following
her own thoughts and still watching him
intently, "Mrs. Thurlow told you this—
long ago—and—and you have been making
yourself miserable with a kind of retrospective
jealousy."
"Not retrospective at all," he maintained.
" It was there, or the material for
it plain and clear coming up in connection
always with the very present. If you had
married Orton you would have gone as
ambassadress to Russia—would have had
all his position and wealth. I can't help
thinking of those things to-day, as I have
of others on other days; and now that you
are going to meet him again to-night "
"I see," she answered, slowly nodding
her head.
"I've been a slave to that fellow," Stanwood
said feverishly. "I have tried year
in and year out for your sake to keep up
with him, but he's set such a devil of a
pace with his career. As you know, there
is no more successful man in the country.
Where was I, a mere mortal with only the
ordinary bits of what is creditable that
fall to every-day industrious plodders?
I've won what I thought would please you,
and then he has come on with something
which left me and my poor work snuffed
out."
"Jim—Jim." She spoke softly, and
putting out her hand held his for a moment.
"Don't think I have not recognized it,"
he went on excitedly. " You've been wonderful
about it; not once have you let me
see that you minded, that you thought me
lacking, but I have felt it all none the less,
and I have worked "
"That is the reason you have been so—
ambitious."
"No, I cannot say that. I should have
been very much the same anyhow, I suppose.
Still, it has counted. Away back
in my mind unceasingly was the sense of
what Arthur Orton was doing, of the way
that he was building up his great reputation
more and more, and the way you
must be considering me."
"Would it," she asked slowly and gravely,
yet with an inflection he could not understand,
"be any comfort to you if I told
you I have never in any of these years
once thought of Arthur Orton? "
"Would it!" he exclaimed quickly.
" Wouldn't it? I was afraid that you must
be sorry that you married me."
" If I never have been sorry? " she asked
with the same steadfastness, still with
something of the same, almost mocking,
accent.
That Marian had wonderful eyes was