Chapter I

Thomas Patrick Finnerty entered his house and closed the door behind him. He liked this closing of the house door every evening, the shutting out of the world from Mary and himself. He had, too, a sense of increased importance. On the street he was only one of a mass of similar men, perhaps a trifle more humble, even a size or so smaller than most of them. But once inside his house he was by way of being a god.

But a very young and gentle god. Even an apologetic god.

“I’m afraid I’m late, honey,” he said, at the kitchen door.

“I only hope the chops aren’t spoiled.”

“I’m not very hungry, anyhow.” He drew himself up a little. “The Chief took me to lunch to-day.”

It had been a great event, this going out with the Chief to luncheon. He could still see the eyes of the office on them, could almost hear the buzz that followed their departure. But Mary was unimpressed.

“I should think he might!” she said. “The way you slave for him.”

“Well, he’s a great man. Any way you look at it, he’s a great man,” said Pat, loyally. He looked at her. She was not beautiful; her chin receded, and her throat was long and full, a nervous, sensitive throat. But her eyes were soft and limpid, and whenever she looked at Thomas Patrick they were full of pride and love. However, she was not looking at him now, and he caught a quiver of that tell-tale throat.

“What have you got against him anyhow?” he inquired. It was the only subject on which they differed, and to-night with the memory of that luncheon and its conversation in his mind it troubled him. He hated differing with anybody.

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“He paid my doctor bill last summer.”

“I know it. You’ve told me often enough.”

“Then what is it? You don’t deny he’s a big man?”

“Not with _you_ around, I don’t!”

She dished up the supper, and he trotted after her into the little dining room. His faithful eyes were anxious. If he could only make Mary see the Chief as he saw him, all would be well; a big man, doing big things. Not that he didn’t—well, a man who worked like that had to play sometimes. The bigger the man sometimes, the more violent the reactions. He didn’t quite understand the Chief, that way, but then he wasn’t there to understand. He was only his secretary.

He studied Mary as she ate.

“There’s _something_ in your mind about him,” he persisted.

“Well, look at his wife.”

“What about her?”

“She doesn’t look happy, does she?”

“She’s sick,” said Thomas Patrick. “She’s been on the edge of nervous prostration for years.”

“And what gives her that?” Mary demanded.

Thomas Patrick put down his napkin.

“If you’re blaming _him_ for that,” he said earnestly, “let me tell you something. If ever a man was good to his wife, he is. Only the other day she wanted some silver fox, and she had it in twenty-four hours. And he’s got a standing order at the florists’ for her. I’ve got her birthday and their wedding anniversary on the calendar, and all I’ve got to do—”

“_You_ do it, don’t you?”

“He’s always sending her presents. _I_ don’t do that, do I? He selects them and he pays for them. And what’s more, she hasn’t the sense to stick by him. She’s away half the time. If a woman wants to keep her husband she’s got to stick around.”

“Oh, really!” said Mary.

But it was impossible that he and Mary should quarrel. They loved each other too much. He had no more doubt of Mary’s love for him than of his for her. They were different sorts of love, of course. For instance, he was never jealous of Mary, but she was frequently jealous of him.

“What about that new stenographer you’ve got down there? Is she pretty?” she would say.

“Why, I don’t know,” he would answer, and deliberate as though the matter had not occurred to him before. “No, hardly; not my sort, anyhow.”

“What _is_ your sort?”

“You,” he would say, and smile his boyish smile.

Or:

“Don’t you have a lot of women coming and going there?”

“Some. Not so many.”

“What sort?”

“Old ladies about estates, middle-aged ones fighting the income tax. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

He was not fooled at all. Oh, he was very shrewd, this little Thomas Patrick Finnerty, with his loyal Irish eyes and his warm Irish heart.

“Look here, honey,” he would say sometimes, “don’t you get any foolishness into your head. I never look at any woman but you. I never have and I never will.”

But it pleased him, rather. It invented for him the pleasant little fiction that there was a devil in every man, including himself, and that _he_, Thomas Patrick Finnerty, had successfully subdued that devil.

On those evenings when, on his return, he found Mary unusually “dolled up,” as he called it, and knew that again some hidden fear in her was making her reach out to hold him, he almost filled the little house with sheer pride of sex.

Even her dislike of the Chief was the purest jealousy. She wanted no mixed devotion. She could not see, somehow, that the one could never detract from the other; added to it, rather.

He dried the dishes for her that night, rather humbly coaxing her into good humour again. And he had finally succeeded when Mrs. Tufts, whose husband was doorkeeper at the Lyric Theatre, came from next door to borrow some eggs. She opened the door on them in each other’s arms, and Thomas Patrick, of all things, was kissing that sensitive, tremulous throat.

“Well now, I never saw the like of you two!” she said. “I’d like to bring Jim Tufts right here and show him something.”

She got the eggs and went away, not knowing how many times in the months to come she was to remember that little scene, and try to reconcile it with what had followed.