To all her
questions he replied shortly that the times were bad again, worse than
ever; that he was holding his own, but was tired, tired out. As she had not
been there he had not cared to take a cottage by himself, and had paid few
week-end visits. He had nothing to talk to women about and the men talked
of nothing but the business depression....Alexina had shrugged her
shoulders and concluded that his attitude was a subtle reproach for leaving
him to the dull cares of business while she enjoyed herself in Europe.
She was not in the least sorry for Mortimer. He had been perfectly
comfortable; he had had his friends; she had left him a sum of money which
with the monthly rents from the flats would pay her share in the household
expenses; he could spend his free afternoons at the golf club by the ocean,
and his evenings, when not invited out, at the temple of his idolatry on
Nob Hill. James was a better housekeeper than she was and it was now two
years that Mortimer bad been living the life of a luxurious bachelor at the
back of the house with an always amiable companion at breakfast and dinner.
III
Alexina, as she stood shading her eyes from the brilliant sunlight and
watching a great liner drift through the Golden Gate, wondered if Morty had
consoled himself, and if his Puritanical conscience were flaying him. She
hoped that he had, for she was quite willing that he should be happy in
his own way, poor thing, so long as he secluded his divagations from the
world--and she could trust him to do that! Now that she had ceased to be
the complaisant bored wife with dull nerves and torpid imagination she
would be the last to condemn him.
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