FROM THE LIFE
"There!" he said. "Now! Good!" Then suddenly, in another voice, leaning on her heavily, he added: "Get me something to drink—quick. I'm all in."
And in that inelegant manner Mary Carey was reconciled to reality.
14
I say "Mary Carey," for he dropped the "Rosalind"; and though he married her under the name of McGillicuddy in order to escape publicity, she is known as Mary Carey to the few friends whom she has made—chiefly at summer resorts—since she has gradually emerged from her seclusion.
She has never emerged very far. She is too busy. She still acts as her husband's secretary, though a trio of silent Chinese have supplanted her as house-maid, valet, and cook. Carey has not emerged at all. He is, for one thing, too happy in his home. For another, he is—Owen Carey. He has taken refuge from all reality in his romantic art, and he devotes himself to it in the silence of a Trappist monk. How any one ever interested him in the Authors' League I cannot imagine. He resigned from the executive committee as soon as they began to talk about affiliating with the American Federation of Labor.
She is as silent as he, but she gives much more the impression of being a personage in her own right. She has a low-voiced air of grave young placidity, and she is slenderly graceful and well-dressed, with
[ 40 ]
