"But if there isn't a man to fight a woman's battles?"
"There will always be some one to fight yours."
"You mean that I can--marry? But what if I don't care to marry merely
to be--supported?"
"There would have to be other things, of course," gravely.
"What, for example?"
"Love."
"You mean the 'honor and obey' kind? But don't want that when I marry.
I want a man to say to me, 'Come, let us fight the battle together. If
it's defeat, we'll go down together. If its victory, we'll win.'"
This was to him a strange language, yet there was that about it which
thrilled him.
Yet he insisted, dogmatically, "There are men enough in the world to
take care of the women, and the women should let them."
"No, they should not. Suppose I should not marry. Must I let Barry
take care of me, or Constance--and go on as Aunt Isabelle has, eating
the bread of dependence?"
"But you? Why, one only needs to look at you to know that there'll be
a live-happy-ever-after ending to your romance."
"That's what they thought about Aunt Isabelle. But she lost her lover,
and she couldn't love again. And if she had had an absorbing
occupation, she would have been saved so much humiliation, so much
heart-break."
She told him the story with its touching pathos. "And think of it,"
she ended, "right here in our garden by the fountain, she saw him for
the last time."
Chilled by the ghostly breath of dead romance, they sat for a while in
silence, then Mary said: "So that's why I'm trying to learn
something--that will have an earning value. I can sing and play a
little, but not enough to make--money."
She sighed, and he set himself to help her.
"The quickest way," he said, "to acquire speed, is to have some one
read to you."
"Aunt Isabelle does sometimes, but it tires her."
"Let me do it. I should never tire."
"Oh, wouldn't you mind? Could we practice a little--now?"
And so it began--the friendship in which he served her, and loved the
serving.
He read, slowly, liking to see, when he raised his eyes, the slim white
figure in the big chair, the firelight on the absorbed face.
Thus the time slipped by, until with a start, Mary looked up.
"I don't see what is keeping Barry."