Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/103

 "Why won't it do? He's a man. A real man."

"He looks it, honey. But he won't do, just the same. What's his name?"

"McNair. Tom McNair."

"Very well, I'll take it for granted this Tom McNair is in love with you. I suppose he has told you so."

Kay nodded.

"And that this love is all you have in common. That's true, too, isn't it?"

"What have any other two people who love and marry?"

"Plenty," she said quickly. "Tastes. Habits. Ideas of life. You don't realize all that now, but you will later on. This—this early ecstasy we call love, it's only a part of the whole business. And when it's gone—and it always goes, my dear—you have to have something else to fall back on. I suppose you met him out at the ranch?"

"Yes."

"What is he? Foreman? I thought Mallory"

"He isn't anything. He just works there. I don't think he owns a thing in the world, unless it's his horse and saddle! Oh, don't tell me I'm crazy. I've gone through all that. And I've fought until I'm worn out. I can't fight it any more. It's just happened, that's all."

"Do they know, here?"

"More or less. They think I've given him up."

"But you haven't?"

"Not if he wants me. I ought to tell you this about him; I asked him to let me stay, and he sent me away."

If Bessie made any mental reservation about this heroic attitude of Tom's she concealed it.

"That was very noble of him," she said, and Kay asceptedaccepted [sic] it literally.

But Bessie did not feel, as she went back to her room an hour or so later, that she had effected any real change in Kay's attitude. The mention of disinheritance she had put aside with a gesture. Talk of her father's and mother's sense of injury and deep resentment had brought tears to her eyes, but had not weakened her. Nor could she be,