“You must wait,” he temporized; “such things clear up after a little.”

“And if they don’t?” she demanded.  “What if they are choked by a hundred cowardly or selfish thoughts?  It can be too late so terribly soon, Howat.  You must know that.  You see, I can’t decide what really is the most valuable, what should be held tight on to, or let go.  There are two me’s, it seems—­one what I want and the other what I am.  I want Jim and I’m Mariana Jannan.  All that about Eunice or Essie, or whatever her name was, doesn’t matter a bawbee, as you say.  I hate it because I think at times it makes him unhappy.  Really, I believe I am fonder of him because of it.  We owe him something—­the superior Jannans and Pennys.  Why, Howat, he’s your own blood, and you looked at him as if he were a grocer’s assistant.  And I watched hatefully for the little expressions that seemed common.  Of course, out in those mills, he would pick up a lot that wouldn’t touch us; and, after all, he could drop them.”

“If you have any thought of reforming him,” he commented dryly, “you might as well see a wedding stationer.”

“I could influence him,” she insisted; “I’d at least count for as much as those shovellers and furnace men.”

“But not,” he proceeded relentlessly, “against the Essie Scofield you dismissed so easily.  I don’t doubt for a minute the unhappiness you spoke of; it would he a part of his inheritance; and you’d never charm it out of him.  Damn it, Mariana,” he burst out, “he’s inferior!  That’s all, inferior.”  Anger and resentment destroyed his caution, his planned logic, restraint.  “I can see what your life would be, if you can’t.  You would live in a no-man’s land; and all the clergymen in the world couldn’t make you one.”

“It wouldn’t be the clergymen, Howat,” she said simply.  “And you mustn’t think I am only a silly with her first young man.  I have kissed them before, Howat; yes, and liked it.  I am not happy with Jim; it’s something else, like tearing silk.  He is so confident and so helpless; he’s drinking now, too.”

“I suppose that is an added attraction,” he commented.  She chose to ignore this.  “I half promised him,” she continued, “to take dinner with his family.  He will be in the city next week.  I said I thought you’d bring me.”

“Well, I won’t,” he replied in a startled energy.  “Mariana, you’re out of your head.  Go to Byron Polder’s house!  Me!” In his excitement he dropped a lighted cigarette on the Chinese rug.  “I have no one else,” she told him.  “Perhaps I’ll marry Jim, and go away ...  I thought you might want to be with me, at the last.”

He fumbled for his glass, fixed it in his eye, and then dropped it out, clearing his throat sharply.  He rose and crossed the room, and looked out through the open door at the night.  The stars were hazy, and there was a constant reflection of lightning on the horizon.  Howat Penny swore silently at his increasing softness, his betrayal by his years.  Yet it might be a good thing for her to see the Polder family assembled, Byron—­he was a pretentious looking fool—­at one end of the table and Delia Mullen Polder at the other.  There were more children, too.  But if it became necessary, heaven knew how he would explain all this to Charlotte.  “I believe,” he said, apparently innocently, “that they live in the north end of the city.”