“Howat,” she exclaimed, sitting beside him, “how silly of you!  A cold now with winter done.  The snow is running away.  And these soda-watery tanks.”  He felt a warmth communicated by her actual presence.  “It’s just my breathing,” he told her; “it gets stopped up.  A damned nuisance!  Did Honduras meet you?”

She assured him that she had been correctly received, and vanished to remove her hat.  Mariana must not sit in here, with the windows open, he told the nurse; but then, he added, it was no good giving Mariana advice.  She wouldn’t listen to it, except to do the opposite.  She came back, in one of her eternal knitted things, this one like a ripe banana, and sat in the nurse’s place.  There was a great deal he wanted to know, in a few minutes, when he felt less oppressed.  The night came swiftly, lit by his familiar lamps; Rudolph moved about in the orderly disposition of fresh white laundry.  A coat needed pressing.  It would do to-morrow.  The doctor hurt him with a little scraping stab at the bottom of his ear.

“Mariana,” he at last made the effort of speech, questioning:  “I have been bothered about your—­your temporary arrangement.  That Harriet, you know ... make trouble.”

“Why, Howat,” she replied, admirably detached; “you don’t read the important sheets of the papers!  Harriet has made a tremendous success with what was supposed to be a small part.  A New York manager has engaged her in letters of fire, for an unthinkable amount.  James and I sent her our obscure compliments, but we were virtuously rebuked by a legal gentleman.  Harriet, it seems, is going to cast us off.”

Of all that she had said only the word obscure remained in his mind; and it roused in him an echo of his old, dogmatic pride.  “Mariana,” he demanded, “didn’t the reorganization come about; isn’t James Polder superintendent?”

She hesitated, then replied in a low, steady voice.  “Yes, Howat, it did; but they didn’t move Jim up.  An older, they said steadier, man was chosen.”  It was the oranges, he told himself, the oranges and brandy; the cursed young fool.  “You must come away, Mariana,” he continued more faintly; “fair trial, failure—­something to yourself, our family.”

“Leave Jimmy because he wasn’t made superintendent!” she replied in an abstracted impatience.  Then, “I wonder about a smaller plant?  Won’t you understand, Howat,” she leaned softly over him; “I need Jim as badly as he needs me; perhaps more.  If I had any superior illusions they have all gone.  I can’t tell us apart.  Of course, I’d like him to get on, but principally for himself.  Jim, every bit of him, the drinking and tempers, and tenderness you would never suspect, is my—­oxygen.  I can see that you want to know if I am happy; but I can’t tell you, Howat.  Perhaps that’s the answer, and I am—­I have a feeling of being a part of something outside personal happiness, something that has tied Jim and me together and gone on about a larger affair.  You see, Howat, I wasn’t consulted,” she added in a more familiar impudence; “whether I was pleased or not didn’t appear to matter.  In a position like that it’s silly to talk about happiness as if it were like the thrill at your first ball.”