"If I'm going to be
drowned I'll be drowned, whether it's in the sea or in a bathtub.
And I'll not let father go alone."
Fatalism being their mother's last argument and always final, the
children gave up. They let her go. More, they prepared for her so
elaborate a wardrobe that the poor soul had had no excuse to
purchase anything abroad. She had gone through Paris looking
straight ahead lest her eyes lead her into the temptation of the
shops. In Vienna she wore her home-town outfit with
determination, vaguely conscious that the women about her had
more style, were different. She priced unsuitable garments
wistfully, and went home to her trunks full of best materials
that would never wear out. The children, knowing her, had bought
the best.
To this couple, then, Stewart had rented his apartment. It is
hard to say by what psychology he found their respectability so
satisfactory. It was as though his own status gained by it. He
had much the same feeling about the order and decency with which
Marie managed the apartment, as if irregularity were thus
regularized.
Marie had met him once for a walk along the Graben. She had worn
an experimental touch of rouge under a veil, and fine lines were
drawn under her blue eyes, darkening them. She had looked very
pretty, rather frightened. Stewart had sent her home and had
sulked for an entire evening.
So curious a thing is the mind masculine, such an order of
disorder, so conventional its defiance of convention.
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