A Fountain Sealed | Page 3

books on ethics, politics. It isn't a question of my liking him. I
don't know that I ever thought of my feeling for him in those terms. It
was reverence, rather, and gratitude for his being what he was."
"Well, dear, I do remember hearing men, and not worldly men, as you
call them, either, say that his work for civic reform amounted to very
little and that his books were thin and unoriginal. As for that
community place he founded at, where was it?--Clackville? He
meddled that out of life."
"He may have been Utopian, he may have been in some ways

ineffectual; but he was a good man, a wonderful, yes, Rose, a
wonderful man,"
"And do you think that Molly has hit the mark in this, too?" Rose asked,
turning her eyes on Pennington. He had been listening with an air of
light inattention and now he answered tersely, as if conquering some
inner reluctance by over-emphasis, "Couldn't abide him."
Rose laughed out, though with some surprise in her triumph; and Mary,
redder than before, rejoined in a low voice, "I didn't expect you, Jack,
to let personal tastes interfere with fair judgment."
"Oh, I'm not judging him," said Jack.
"But do you feel with me," said Rose, "that it's no wonder that Mrs.
Upton left him."
"Not in the least," Pennington replied, glad, evidently, to make clear his
disagreement. "I don't know of any reason that Mrs. Upton had for
deserting not only her husband but her children."
"But have they been left? Isn't it merely that they prefer to stay?"
"Prefer to live in their own country? among their own people?
Certainly."
"But she spends part of every year with them. There was never any
open breach."
"Everybody knew that she would not live with her husband and
everybody knew why," Mary said. "It has nearly broken Imogen's heart.
She left him because he wouldn't lead the kind of life she wanted to
lead--the kind of life she leads in England--one of mere pleasure and
self-indulgent ease. She hasn't the faintest conception of duty or of
patriotism. She couldn't help her husband in any way, and she wouldn't
let him help her. All she cares for is fashion, admiration and pretty
clothes."

"Stuff and nonsense, my dear! She doesn't think one bit more about her
clothes than Imogen does. It requires more thought to look like a saint
in velvet than to go to the best dressmaker and order a trousseau. I
wonder how long it took Imogen to find out that way of doing her
hair."
"Rose!--I must beg of you--I love her."
"But I'm saying nothing against her!"
"When I think of what she is suffering now, what you say sounds
cruelly irreverent. Jack, I know, feels as I do."
"Yes, he does," said the young man. He got up now and stood, very tall,
in the middle of the room looking down at Mary. "I must be off. I'll
bring you those books to-morrow afternoon--though I don't see much
good in your reading d'Annunzio."
"Why, if you do, Jack?" said Mary, with some wonder. And the degree
of intimate equality in the relations of these young people may be
gaged by the fact that he appeared to receive her rejoinder as
conclusive.
"Well, he's interesting, of course, and if one wants to understand
modern decadence in an all-round way--"
"I want to understand everything," said Mary. "And please bring your
best Italian dictionary with them."
"Before you go, Jack," said Rose, "pray shut the register. It's quite
stifling in here."
"Far too hot," said Jack, showing his impartiality of spirit by his
seconding of Rose's complaint, for it was evident she had much
displeased him. "I've often told you, Mary, how bad it was for you.
That's why you are so pale."
"I'm so sorry. Have you been feeling it much? Leave the door into the

hall open."
"And do cast one glance, if only of disapprobation, upon me, Jack,"
Rose pleaded in mock distress.
"You are a very amusing child, Rose, sometimes," was Pennington's
only answer.
"He's evidently very cross with me," said Rose, when he was gone.
"While you are not--you who have every right to be, angelic Molly."
"I hope you didn't realize, Rose, how you were hurting him."
"I?" Rose opened wide eyes. "How, pray?"
"Don't you know that he is devoted to Imogen Upton?"
"Why, who isn't devoted to her, except wicked me?"
"Devoted in particular--in love with her, I think," said Mary.
Rose's face took on a more acutely discontented look, after the pause in
which she seemed, though unrepentantly, to acquiesce in a conviction
of ineptitude. "Really in love with her?"
"I think so; I hope so."
"How foolish of him," said Rose. Mary, at this, rested a