The color in Fergus' cheeks flamed out now. He too became ill at ease.
"Don't think," said Clarence, "that I mean to complain. It's all my fault. A man ought to be able to make his wife happy. . . . I've tried hard. I've tried to make money. I'm good to her . . . but. . . ." He trailed into silence for a time and when he returned it was easy to say, "But somehow she escapes me always. . . . There's something in her that doesn't belong to me. I don't know what it is because I've never been able to discover it. . . . And you can't talk to her about such things. . . . I've tried. Once I got almost to the point and she said, 'Don't worry, Clarence. You mustn't take things so seriously. . . . I'm all right. Don't think about me.' But I can't help thinking, because when she's unhappy I am too, because I love her so much. I'd do anything for her."
He lay back and fell to regarding the ceiling. Fergus, in silence, watched him now with a look of intense curiosity. Perhaps he guessed what it was Ellen had done to him. Perhaps he realized that, without knowing it, he had himself come to look upon Clarence in the same fashion that his sister regarded him . . . as a nice, kind, good man whom one tolerated. He was older and paler and more insignificant than he had been in the days when he courted May Seton. What the man needed perhaps was some one—a wife—who would lean upon him, who would think him a wonderful creature. And instead of that he had Ellen. Clarence rose on one elbow and said slowly, "But don't tell her. . . . Don't say I spoke of it."
It was the end of their talk. They never mentioned the thing again, but in some way the conversation appeared to bring Clarence a kind of dumb relief.
Of course, there were things that Fergus could not have known. He could not have known—Fergus, who took life so lightly—that the little man's only experience with love had been Ellen. He could not have known that Clarence was the victim of a sensual nature placed by some ironic trick of fate in the body of a prig.
