Half loaves

CHAPTER VI

The hesitation of the first steps of marriage, the explanation of love, the abandonment, the amazing tendernesses, the secret rivalry in affection for each other—those are the moments of greatest dramatic intensity. Stories give us, as is natural for them, perhaps, the odd cases—the ill-matched couples—but for the great number of people who follow nature and are led by her there never comes again greater poignancy in life than steeps the wedding night and the hour of the birth of their children. More excitement, more pleasure, more joy at other times perhaps—but it is then that human life sounds its depths. It is the memory of such times which may account, more than the pressure of society or the weight of habit, for the strange fidelities of men to unworthy women and of women to unworthy men.

Cecily stored her memory with very beautiful things during the first days of marriage. There were times when she walked in an exalted dream. She had become immensely conscious of herself. It seemed to her that she could not walk unnoticed on the street—the glory of her happiness must show to other people. Fear, the strange fears in her contemplation of her marriage, the nervous fears during the ceremony had been blown away in a very wind of happiness. She had no care, no thought except Dick and their amazing joy in each other. They had gone to New York and then, after a few days, motored up the Hudson, keeping to the State road only as the fancy took them and wandering off for half days along country by-ways, leading through valleys of farms and steep little towns set on hills. Through the long evenings of slow twilight they drove by the river, and when it was dark there was some hotel or road house transformed by the magic of the journey into a hospitable inn for wayfarers. And night came and they were in strange rooms but always with the new warmth of intimacy contrasting with the strangeness of the setting and making them closer together. So on through a golden month—a month which held moments of sacredness, of steady joy, of sheer laughter.

Dick was making himself real to Cecily and enjoying her as he had never enjoyed anything before. There was not so much glamour for him as for her, partly because he was a man and partly because the world kept its proportions for Dick almost always. As a lover and a suitor he had done exactly what a lover and suitor should do—tortured himself with feelings of unworthiness and with doubts and lain awake with his hopes. As a husband, his feelings changed. He was no longer doubtful, no longer bothered about unworthiness. He was Cecily’s husband and radiantly, boyishly satisfied. Marriage was accomplished in his life and it was all that was delightful. And Cecily was the most beautiful and charming of women. His feeling was partly inspired directly by his wife; also it went with the code of men in marriage. There was room in his mind for other things, too—for business plans, for politics.

Cecily had no code. To her all that had happened had happened to her first and singly, of all women in the world. She could not conceive of grouping her experiences or sharing them with all women. Nor did she have thoughts which did not concern Dick. He had suffused her mind. She was very innocent and her husband, entering her mind and heart, had taken complete possession. She thought through him, and it never occurred to her that she was subordinating herself. She wanted to share everything in the world with him and to identify herself with him. Into her first month of marriage she brought exactly the elements to make it perfect and if she failed to establish exactly the proper basis for a modern marriage she built for herself and her husband a perfect memory and dropped an anchor thereby.

Dick had glimpses of insight. “I wonder if you are really very innocent or very wise,” he said laughingly to her. “Sometimes I guess one and sometimes the other. You avoid disagreeable things so—so exquisitely. Most women are so controversial nowadays.”

“I’ve nothing to be controversial about. Besides I don’t like controversies.”

“Wonderful woman!” admired Dick.

He enjoyed making Cecily presents, took delight in the almost childish pleasure she showed over his thoughtfulness and over new possessions. And he liked to see people admire her, as people invariably did.

They had planned on a month of vacation and then were to join Cecily’s mother and stepfather in New York for a few days before going home. Cecily’s mother awaited that meeting with some anxiety. In the days before the wedding she had kept close to Cecily, a little shyly, as if she wished to compress into those days a closer companionship than they had ever had before. But it was too late, perhaps, to create a feeling that grows naturally with years. They admired each other immensely, but they were not intimate.

Mrs. Warner’s manner, with its unaccustomed trace of nervousness as she stood with her husband before the gates of the train yards, was not reflected in him. He was the first to catch a glimpse of Dick and Cecily and chuckled.

“There they are”—he waved boisterously—“and they don’t see us; they aren’t even looking at us. Like to know what we came for to break in on that—if we could break in!”

They came along the platform, absorbed in something they were discussing, and with one glance at Cecily Mrs. Warner’s face lost its anxiety. Cecily walked regardless of the world. Dick must have been very good to her and very gentle to make her look like that. Then the young people saw the elder ones and hurried to them.

There was something fairly humorous in Cecily’s new sophistication. She felt much older, much more learned, thoroughly admitted to the class of married women. Even her mother smiled. And her stepfather teased her.

“She swaggers when she gives her name,” she said. “Did you hear her tell the clerk that the order was for Mrs. Richard Harrison? He grew pale at the august name. You mustn’t be such a snob, Cecily. Almost anybody can get married.”

“Not to Dick,” said Cecely, unperturbed.

“No—not without some penalty as things stand now,” admitted Mr. Warner.

Such swaggers—Dick sported his complacencies too—amused the Warners and delighted them. Dick had a proprietary way of deciding when Cecily was tired and the note in his voice as he said “my wife” reflected the superiority of Cecily’s “Mrs. Harrison.” The older people showed their pleasure in all this by spending a great deal of money and being willing to postpone their Atlantic City trip still further. But Cecily demurred. She wanted to get back to Carrington now to take the final step that might prove to be the happiest—to begin her home.

When by night they reached Carrington she felt she was right. No one met them, for they had told no one of their coming and Dick put his wife into a taxi and gave the magic address of their home. It was ready for them, they knew, and Mrs. Warner had already installed a servant to keep it open and comfortable.

Dick threw open the door and drew his wife inside. To him it was a glorious adventure, but Cecily’s face reflected more than adventure. She was very grave. Instinctively she felt that her part of things was beginning. Until now it had been Dick’s game—Dick was responsible for what they did and she had been happily content to leave things in his hand—but now her share in the responsibility of marriage began.

“You look so solemn,” said Dick. “It’s a house, not a church, you know.”

“It feels like a church. I never felt so subdued—and holy—in any church before.”

“Why, Cecily, dear!” Dick did not let her maintain that tone. She was tired and he was afraid she was a little overstrained. He made her laugh, led her on a triumphal tour of the house, gave a graphic description of himself caring for a furnace. She met his gayety with gayety, but underneath the gayety persisted that feeling of responsibility and—holiness. It was like a church, her mind kept persisting.

With the next morning came a bustle that drove those thoughts away. Cecily assumed command of her household and Dick went to his office. The telephone began to ring persistently. The maid appealed to Cecily for decisions about food and the housekeeping machinery. Cecily went about using all her new dignity to its best advantage, and repeating to herself under her breath, “This is mine—my home,” with unfading wonder that it was so. She would pause to look about her in admiration, justified admiration, for the sunlight pouring into the big simple living-room, gleaming on the brasses before the fireplace, bringing out the dull colors of the upholstery, made it a very charming room. The living-room and her bedroom were the rooms she liked best, for they both caught the sunlight more than any other rooms in the house, and her bedroom was peaceful as well as beautiful, most of its color concentrated in the Chinese rug which covered the floor and set off the ivory colored furniture and walls. It was all spacious and exquisitely clean and orderly. Housekeeping instincts crowded to the front of Cecily’s consciousness.

She lunched alone that day, for she and Dick had decided, Dick guiding, that it was better for him not to attempt to come home for lunch and lose two hours in the middle of the day. Cecily had agreed with him, but lunching alone, as she tried it, seemed to her a waste of time. And the hours hanging a little heavy on her hands after that first lonely luncheon, she took out the little coupé which had been her stepfather’s wedding gift to her and manufactured a shopping list.

In one of the shops she met Fliss Horton. Fliss was standing in an attitude of reflection before the blouse counter, pretending to the clerk that she was unable to decide which blouse to choose and actually wondering desperately if her father’s account was too large and too long unpaid to justify the purchase of a twenty dollar blouse, reduced from forty. She was idly speculating on the practical use of the blouse and the possible occasions for wearing it when Cecily stopped beside her.

“I thought,” said Fliss, “that brides didn’t need to buy clothes for years and years, especially brides who have just come from New York.”

“They wouldn’t have to if their trousseaux were a little more practical. I have any number of afternoon clothes and pictorial blouses and traveling things with long sleeves. What I need above all and haven’t is a short-sleeved smock to work in mornings.”

“There again I thought all brides wore trailing negligees until noon.”

They laughed together and felt very well acquainted.

“Not brides who keep house. I shall find plenty of ways to assist my maid and I need a good bare arm to do it.”

Fliss, buying the twenty dollar “bargain” of chiffon, was looking enviously at Cecily, who was inspecting cotton smocks at three dollars and ninety-eight cents. Fliss didn’t buy working clothes. She worked in the morning with her mother, hating it, but she and her mother wore “old things” that had to be worn out.

“Are you all settled?”

“Mother and I did that before we went away and so there was nothing to do but enter the house when we came back. You must come to see me.”

“I want to.”

They lingered, talking casually, and Fliss gained several advantages, being seen by half a dozen people with Cecily and finally being asked to ride home in the new coupé. She spoke to every one she knew from the window of the car and Cecily marveled openly at the number of people she knew and at the number of hats that were lifted from handsome masculine heads as Fliss smiled and nodded at them.

“You know every one,” she commented.

Fliss laughed with much pleasure. “I’ve met a lot of people during this last year,” she admitted. “If you and your husband don’t scorn the Assembly and Club dances you’ll see all these people there.”

“Indeed we won’t scorn them. I think I had cards to the Assembly once or twice last winter, but mother thought I was a bit young.”

“Now that you are married you aren’t too young for anything, are you?”

Cecily caught a hint of mockery in the tone and looked surprised. “Well, I shall be twenty in a few months and that’s pretty old. You see I was nearly nineteen when I finished the convent.”

“I’m twenty now.”

“You look about seventeen.”

“Because I’m small. I was in High School five years, because they cruelly flunked me one year. But High School was fun.”

“Yes,” said Cecily vaguely. She was watching some one in the passing crowd and suddenly with a smile she blew her horn and pulled up beside the pavement. “There’s my husband,” she added.

Dick came smilingly to the side of the car.

“It’s exciting meeting your wife on the street,” he said gayly. “I’ve been wondering how soon I could cut and run for home, despite my self-respect as a business man.”

“Oh, come now,” begged Cecily.

She, too, found it exciting to meet her husband on the street. A delicious sense of intimacy underran all this casualness. It made her flush and the flush was becoming. Fliss looked at her, leaning forward towards her husband, with that abandon of interest and affection. It was a new way with men for Fliss. Fliss made them fight for favors and interest—mock battles, no doubt, but well staged.

Dick yielded.

“I will go home now. The house has probably gone to rack and ruin in my absence,” he said, getting in beside Fliss, who had moved to the back seat. They kept up a gay banter, throwing an occasional remark at Cecily, who was driving. The slight embarrassment Fliss sometimes showed when talking to Cecily had vanished now. Fliss was sure of her ground instinctively with men. Hers were methods as old as woman and as deft—flattering, piquing, stimulating.

They dropped her at the door of the apartment house, still smiles and coquetry.

“Funny little thing, isn’t she?” said Dick, climbing over to Cecily’s side. “Where did you pick her up, sweetheart? She doesn’t seem like your kind.”

“I’m always half sorry for her and quite interested.”

“Oh, she’s just a little climbing gutter-pup. Smart—and pretty. She’ll land a man with a million some day if she plays it right.”

“She’s not as bad as that, Dick, and she can’t help it if she’s poor and wants things.”

“All right, Mrs. Charity. Be as good to her as you like. Only don’t blame me if she doesn’t measure up. She’s been going around to dances for years with men twice her age. She’s decent enough, but sophisticated—sophisticated as you never will be.”

“You sound very condemning.”

“No, I didn’t mean to. But I’ve lost my taste for chickens. I prefer—swans.” And he slipped an arm around her, regardless of her driving.

The house was very lovely in the late afternoon light. The door was open, welcoming them into the softly darkened hall.

CHAPTER VII

For nearly a year and a half now she had been out of school, searching in her vague, unskilled way for a chance to establish herself more securely and comfortably. A year and a half might not be long for a débutante, but Fliss knew that she could not take her own time. It was hard enough now to maintain her place, such as it was, without letting people tire of her. Also the time had sharpened her sense of values. She was not yet quite sure of what she wanted, but she knew most definitely what she did not want. Marriage for the sake of marriage had not the least appeal for her. She knew too much about the sordid parts of domesticity for that. There were too many girls who had a brief career of local popularity and were now wheeling baby carriages and making over last year’s hats; too many young men who, unmarried, had danced and flirted their gay way through society only to become preoccupied, somewhat shabby, hard-working flat-dwellers after their marriage. Fliss had no intention of making any blunder which would land her in such an existence. She was nice to all men. That was because it was wise, lest they become malicious, and because it kept her in practice. But she was more chary with her kisses than she had been in High School and she had learned many new ways of getting without giving.

She had learned too how to take snubs with considerable grace; not humbling herself too much, but rather ignoring them, pretending not to see what for the sake of her scrap of dignity she could not afford to see. But she did see. It was one thing to be a popular girl in High School, to hold the record for the number of invitations to dances, to be the best dancer and the most sought after girl—and another to be left when the school circles broke up and resolved into the social groups to which their families belonged, to be a girl without family backing or a college education, who was determined not to be “dropped.” There were many parents who had found Fliss an attractive little girl, but now saw no reason to include her in their parties for their daughters. Their daughters were young women with futures to be planned for, who must take their places in the community, and Fliss was a social anomaly, pretty but nondescript. People were less cruel, of course, than forgetful. Fliss “didn’t occur to them.” They were full of interests in which she could not share for lack of money, for lack of direction and chaperonage.

Working, as an alternative to marriage, was quite as distasteful to Fliss. She felt that working, especially at the things she could do, would put her definitely in the wrong class and out of the reach of the people to whom she pinned her ambitions. She preferred to be classless rather than to be in the wrong class. To her idleness her parents did not really object. Mr. Horton had little enough to give his wife and daughter, but he expected to give them what he had and to live in shabbiness and self-denial himself. He had suggested once that Fliss learn stenography, but at her scornful protest had dropped the matter, assuming that he did not, as Fliss said, “understand.” The suggestion had been made merely because he felt that Fliss must have time heavy on her hands, and not that he had any theory about her being a wage earner. Like millions of men of all grades of strength and success, he expected to be eternally liable for the women he accumulated in his family, and to be subject to them. Mrs. Horton had educated him in domestic life. He took it mildly as a blend of disorderly bedroom, where his possessions were crowded into the smallest possible space by an array of unattractive feminine things over which inevitably hung the smell of face powder, thick and sweet, a dining room in which food and service were inferior to his quick lunch place and a living-room in which he might sit unmolested, unless Fliss or his wife wanted him out of it, which often happened. When they did, he went to the moving picture house on the corner and saw the program through twice.

It was hard for Fliss to find the slightest interest in her parents. She might have been thrown with them casually, instead of sharing one of the closest of ties. Perhaps it was equally hard on the parents to be even semi-responsible—responsible as far as she wished to allow—for a bit of cold, hard brilliance like Fliss, whom their easy-going philosophy could never hope to comprehend. Mr. Horton would have been satisfied with the most commonplace of sons-in-law and Mrs. Horton delighted merely to have Fliss attain the vague dignity of marriage. How was it possible for them to imagine the scheming and plotting, the steps and retreats which filled the mind of their daughter? She did not bother to tell them about her status with different men—even when the men asked her to marry them. She had had three proposals in this year and a half. One was from a handsome young man who worked in a broker’s office in the daytime and danced and flirted in the evenings with as much abandon as did Fliss. She gave little thought to his offer. The frivolity which had stood him in such good stead as a companion on many an evening was absolutely against him as a candidate for husbandhood. And added to this was the fact that he was an unknown young man who came from another city, presumably from obscurity, and without money.

The second offer was a curious one, made half in jest and half in earnest by one of the city’s wealthiest and most dissipated young men. He was a young man whom Fliss might have handled to advantage had she taken his laughing proposal seriously, but she did not choose to take it so. She merely laughed at him, shrewdly gauging behind her mirth the difficulty of living with dissipation even if it were guarded by wealth. Fliss was in pursuit of solidity. That she might have found in some measure in the repeated boyish offers of Gordon, her High School companion. Gordon’s position was unassailable and in each college vacation he followed Fliss about with a devotion which was unremitting and should have been touching to her. He wanted to leave college and marry her—wanted to run away with her—but she held him off too, not quite so definitely as the others. There was a good chance that Gordon would always be useful to her. But he was very young and entirely dependent on his parents.

What Fliss was anxious for now was some definite opportunity to present itself. She was vaguely conscious that her technique was fairly perfect, but that she must have something to work on soon. The roll of dust, more obnoxious every morning, the torn window curtain, the dyed slippers, and, most of all, the sound of her mother’s voice in the other room, engaged in some interminable conversation over the telephone, filled her with an almost unbearable desire to do something about her situation soon.

The voice ceased, the receiver clicked and she heard her mother’s footsteps turned towards her room.

“Not up yet, Flissy?” Her mother came in a little apologetically. “I suppose you are tired after last night I heard you come in and then the cuckoo struck two. That’s pretty late.”

“I can’t very well come home by myself, can I? I’ve got to stay until things are over whether I like it or not. There’s no limousine waiting my orders every night.”

Her mother did not take up the point. She moved heavily about the room, picking up the strewn finery of the night before, settling things into a kind of order.

“Would you like a cup of coffee in bed? I can heat it up in a minute.”

Fliss yawned. “No, I’ll get up. I’d sooner eat anywhere than in this room. I should think father could make that landlord decorate these rooms. They’re like a slum.”

“They won’t do a thing for you. Rents are terrible and they just tell you to take them or leave them. Mrs. Nesbit is looking for a flat and she said——”

“I can repeat what she said without hearing it,” interrupted Fliss, not without a glint of humor. “Come have some coffee with me, mother.” She had an occasional lazy affection for her mother when she was not too much irritated by her. Also she was company when there was no one else.

Mrs. Horton poured the coffee and set it on the edge of the near-mahogany dining table, while Fliss hung languidly over the gas stove making toast. She was an untidy little figure now—negligee trailing, hair straggling, but her eyes, deep and soft from sleep, made up for the rest of her unattractiveness. They sat down and emptied the coffee-pot, cup after cup, a kind of lazy planlessness about them which was characteristic of their usual mornings. But Mrs. Horton roused herself into attempted action sooner than she usually did.

“I suppose you’ve forgotten, haven’t you, that the bridge club meets here to-day, Fliss?”

“Lord, mother, not those terrible women again!”

“Don’t talk so, Fliss. They’re all nice women. Just as good as we are.”

“Well, I shan’t be here.”

“Now, please, Fliss. You know how they talk. If you aren’t here they’ll think it’s awfully funny. I don’t care about your being here all the time, but to help with the refreshments anyway. There’s no one who can serve them as you do.”

“You know how I hate that crowd. Sitting around retailing gossip about women who wouldn’t know them on the street. Backstairs stuff! Oh, why don’t you drop them?”

“Now, you mustn’t be so snobby, Fliss. I’ve known these women for years. Mrs. Ellis——”

“Don’t tell me again that Mrs. Ellis assisted at my birth. Maybe that’s one thing that’s wrong with me.”

“You’ll stay in and help me, won’t you, dear?”

“Washing dishes all afternoon?”

“No, you won’t have to do that sort of thing. I’ve called up Ellen and she will come in at three to help. She’s working now but she asked for an afternoon off.”

“Ellen,” echoed Fliss with deeper gloom.

“Ellen’s a nice girl,” said her mother with an unusually defensive note.

“Of course she’s nice. She’s a lot nicer than the members of your club. But it is tough to have a cousin who’s a servant.”

“What else can the poor girl do? She has to earn her living and she can’t choose. She gets much better money than she would clerking.”

“I suppose.”

Ellen was a sore point. She was a cousin of Mrs. Horton’s who had been brought up on her father’s farm and been a person of some consequence in the farming district. Her father had died and Ellen had sold the farm, finding it heavily weighted with mortgages, and come to the city to work. She knew how to do housework and housework suited her, so she went into service quite simply and without feeling herself depreciated in the least. The aggressiveness of the city servant had been left out of her, and while she did not feel herself at all the equal in position of the ladies she worked for, she had no feeling of common interest with the city servant class, so slavishly imitating their mistresses, so insolent of manner and cheap of ideal. Ellen chose her employers with discretion, and always managed to pick ladies. She treated them not as if they were above her, but merely as if they were engaged on a different sort of job, social as well as economic, and in so doing solved the servant problem in her own small way. But she was an unavoidable cause of suffering to Fliss. Every time she came to see the Hortons—and they could not help being glad to see her, for she brought not only presents to Fliss, but an atmosphere of comfort and devotion into that chaotic apartment—she was a torturing reminder to Fliss that her own social position was founded on nothing and that she ate at the table with a person who served at the tables at which she wished to sit. But she somehow did not say anything to Ellen about the way she felt. There was a quiet dignity about the farm girl as well as a generosity that kept Fliss’s complainings in check.

Another thing was that Ellen always had ready money. She was extremely well paid, spent very little on herself and was always ready to finance some small extravagance for Fliss. The Hortons never had enough ready money and it was a satisfaction to Fliss to possess a blouse or an expensive pair of gloves which were really paid for before she wore them. There was physical comfort, even if mental rancor, in being a cousin of Ellen’s.

Mrs. Horton was bringing out that very point now. “Ellen said she’d stop at Scott’s and get some cream cheese and we can have brown bread sandwiches with the salad and coffee. And she said if she bought a lobster there would be lots of time to cook that after she got here. She works so fast and they are sure to play until five, anyway. Coffee, salad, brown bread sandwiches and cake, and your father can just piece on what’s left over, when he comes home.”

The telephone interrupted them. Fliss answered it in the omnipresent hope of something interesting, and it seemed to galvanize her drooping spirits. As if it were necessary to touch up her appearance in order to get her spirits into action, at the first words she heard she twisted back her hair and drew her negligee around her with her free hand. Her face, so listless a moment before, began to sparkle—to live again—and her voice changed from its discouraged tone into one which fairly sang with interest and desire to please and to coquet.

“Of course you didn’t get me out of bed—no, not tired at all, thought it was fun—I’m glad you liked to dance with me—so do I—I’d love to. What do you suggest?—The music there is good, but the food really too terrible—why I think so, who else is going?—to-morrow night, then, about eight-thirty—yes, you can find it easily enough if you can read numbers. We’re flat dwellers, you know—cliff dwellers, you might say—208 Gladstone Street, Flat H. That’s three flights up—if you groan I’ll meet you with a glass of water—all right—good-by.”

Smiling still, clinging to the atmosphere of jocularity, Fliss hung up the receiver. Her mother watched her without questioning. It was curious that there was not any of the eager curiosity in her face which animates most women in contemplation of their daughter’s flirtations. Mrs. Horton had been well trained to keep out of things. Perhaps she felt that even her daughter’s successful marriage would mean nothing to her. She would be organized and managed through the proper things to do, but there would be no confidence, no dependence. So she waited for Fliss to speak.

Fliss did, though more in reflection than as if anxious to produce any effect on her listener. “Funny—I didn’t know he was at all taken with me. I only met him last night. Mother, I’ve simply got to have that red georgette mended before to-morrow night. I haven’t a rag to wear and maybe if that were fixed up a little—it isn’t dressy at the Palladium and with my black hat I could make the georgette do.”

“Maybe Ellen can do it for you to-night before she goes.”

“I’ll ask her. The sleeves ought to be shorter too, you know. Maybe she could cut them and I’ll help her with the sandwiches if she does and wipe the dishes for her.”

They seemed to forget that Ellen’s labors at Mrs. Horton’s party were given as favors. Mrs. Horton’s face had brightened at her daughter’s new tone of co-operation. She even ventured a question and was answered without rebuff.

“Who was it, Flissy?”

“Why, it was Matthew Allenby. You wouldn’t know, mother, but he is the hardest man in town to get to notice you. He’s not a boy, you know. The man must be nearly forty and a bachelor. I’d never met him till last night; Owen introduced him and we had three dances. He dances horribly and is perfectly crazy about it. He’s a mining man—scads of money—and lives alone somewhere. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if——”

She was really rather pathetic and almost sweet as she fell into her dream, mercenary as it was, for she wanted only things of beauty and she had no cruelty developed in her yet—no deliberate cruelty; unconscious disregard of other people perhaps was the worst of her. She sat dreaming her dream of advancement as most girls of her age dream of love and she did love the things of which she dreamt.

“Come, Fliss, please dress. It’s getting on towards noon and I want to clear this room out.”

Fliss went her way to her room and thence to the little bathroom, where she lay in the tub, from which the enamel was peeling, and wondered just how she would handle Matthew Allenby. Then she dressed for the bridge party, for it was after noon and she knew that her mother’s guests arrived early and stayed late. Her oldest afternoon dress served for them, but with her black fringe of hair setting off the softness and whiteness of her skin, she was so pretty even in her old dress that her mother, bustling into corsets in the next room—she and Fliss always omitted lunch if possible—looked at her with an expression of pride. It meant a good deal to show off Fliss to her friends. She had so little chance.

“But don’t expect me to fill in at a bridge table if any of the old prize-hunting harpies don’t come, because I won’t. I’m going to talk to Ellen and plan the best way to fix over my georgette. By the way, where is Ellen working, now that the Grangers have gone to California?”

Her mother did not know. She knew that Ellen had just taken a new place.

Ellen arrived a little later. She came in heavily burdened with brown packages and bags, having added to the cream cheese and lobster an extra fresh head of lettuce and a small steak for Mr. Horton, so that he wouldn’t “have to eat all that sweet stuff that men hate.” That was like Ellen and they were rare days for Mr. Horton when she came. Broiled steak for him, who was used to a thin sirloin, pounded and fried. Ellen deposited her packages on the kitchen table and looked with admiration at her young cousin.

“My, but that’s a pretty dress, Fliss.”

“This old thing? Just fit for the ragbag.”

Ellen herself was not a person to be ashamed of as far as appearance went. She had no variety in her clothes, but her neat dark blue suit was well-pressed and well-fitted (by Ellen herself). She was quite tall and pleasant-faced, her complexion a trifle steamed into floridness by much cooking, but her hands were as soft and well-kept as those of Fliss. Ellen had her few prides, and her hands were one of them. Seen on the street she looked like a pleasant, middle-class young matron. In markets and shops where she was not known she was invariably called “Mrs.,” the obvious domestic capability in her manner bringing forth that title. The tradespeople always liked to deal with her. She knew what to buy and permitted no extortions or frauds, but she was friendly and uncomplaining and businesslike.

Going about the kitchen of the flat she made a new place of it. It became a hospitable place, a pleasant workshop, with the lobster unwrapped and lying on a platter, the mayonnaise quickly beaten to yellow smoothness, the sandwiches beginning to pile up on two plates and Ellen herself bustling about, but lending an ear of interest to the tale of the red georgette.

“What you want to do with those sleeves, Fliss, is to slit them and then hemstitch them around the corners. I’ll turn them up this evening, slit them and to-morrow all you’ll have to do is to take them into the hemstitching shop down on Third Street and they’ll finish it for you. They won’t charge more than a quarter for that, though if I were you I’d rip off the lace yoke and we’ll turn that in and run a couple of lines of hemstitching around there and then, with that little organdy collar you wear on your velveteen, it’ll look like a new dress.”

Fliss beamed. She knew that it would look like a new dress. She sat on the edge of the shelf, swinging her feet and really admiring Ellen. She liked Ellen’s lack of pose too, just as she liked the lack of pose in Cecily. It was so glorious not to have to pose or pretend. Meanwhile the little girl in her, the really often undernourished girl, was vastly enjoying the sandwiches which Ellen pressed upon her now and then.

“Where are you now, Ellen?”

“Nicest place I’ve ever been. I didn’t mean to take any more general work—just cooking—but I was asked specially to go to this place by Mrs. Granger and I like it. Just a bride and groom. Such a nice young couple and she is lovely to me. Helps me with the work wherever she can and so considerate.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mrs. Richard Harrison. Do you know her?”

Fliss had a funny little sinking feeling. “Yes—a little—oh, yes.”

“I thought you would probably. She’s very young—not more than your age I should say. Now, Fliss,” she caught a fleeting look on her cousin’s face, “I’ll not do anything that is going to make you feel bad.”

“Oh, Ellen, I don’t mean——”

“I know, Fliss—you don’t want to hurt me. You can’t help feeling a little though that you don’t like to have me work for your friends, me being your cousin and all, but you needn’t fuss. No one is going to know I’m your cousin unless you tell them. I decided that long ago.”

Ellen had never been so frank or so expansive and Fliss felt a little ashamed, but somehow vastly relieved. She shifted the blame for her snobbery.

“People are such fools, Ellen.”

“I know.”

With her fears laid to rest, Fliss began to get a glimpse of a silver lining. It wouldn’t be so bad to have Ellen at Cecily’s. She could get information about what Cecily liked, whom she entertained, and learn how to strengthen her friendship with Cecily.

“She must have lovely things,” she began.

“It’s a beautiful house and the best of everything in it. And how Mrs. Harrison does love it! She takes good care of things too, and she won’t let you be extravagant, not that I’d want to. She was brought up in a convent, you know, and she’s neat as wax.”

This to Fliss was irrelevant.

“Is she crazy about her husband?”

But there she blundered. A reticence came over Ellen’s whole manner. Admitted though she might be to the sight of her employer’s feelings, it was not in Ellen to gossip about them. She was willing to tell Fliss about the pattern of Cecily’s silver and the drawn-work in her lunch cloths, but what she saw of Cecily’s emotions was revealed to her in a kind of unconscious confidence and Ellen was incapable of betraying it.

“Of course,” she said shortly, and there was no way of expanding the point. For the second time Fliss felt a little ashamed. She took another sandwich and was silent.

Mrs. Horton’s guests began to arrive and Fliss had to greet them before they took their places at the four bridge tables crowded together in the living-room. They were middle-aged ladies in silk dresses, who took their hats off in Mrs. Horton’s bedroom, used her face powder profusely and then settled down to a game of bridge which was surprisingly cut-throat. On the mantel two packages wrapped in tissue paper stimulated them immensely. Not that the prize—possibly a brass-plated candlestick or a pair of stockings—(silk to the knee)—was of any great value, but the idea of getting something for nothing enthralled them. Their faces grew shrewd and their glances at their opponents inimical; and the table bell which rang now and then as the signal to move from one table to the next was also the signal for a burst of discussion, commiseration and congratulation. Fliss knew them all. Most of them belonged to the district in town holding the brown house whence she had persuaded her parents to move, and she had no good word for them. They were good ladies, addicted to boudoir caps in the morning, who liked to gossip and did it generously. But they were kindly enough, good to their families and on the whole unambitious and satisfied. And for this last quality it was hardest for Fliss to tolerate them. They were so settled; they did not recognize Fliss as a person of ambition, calling her Flissy and speaking about her age, her hair, her dress; comparing her to Clara or Jessie whom Fliss had known in grammar school and who now were stenographers or department store clerks. If they had stood a little in awe of Fliss she would have been much more kindly. But to them she was just “pretty little Flissy Horton” and she knew it.

Her limited cordiality having no effect at all on the matronly conversation, she fled again to the kitchen and took refuge with Ellen, who was already busy with the red georgette dress. Fliss put it on to demonstrate its lacks and possibilities and became, with the donning of it, a curiously unsuitable figure to mix with pots and pans, melted butter and lobster. Fliss was decorative and stimulating enough to be out of place in the midst of mere utilities.

“My, how I hate that gang in there,” she said.

Ellen continued cutting deftly. “Why?”

“They’re so awfully cheap.”

“How do you mean? Clothes?”

“Clothes, of course, but I could stand that if they weren’t so cheap in their ideas—if they had some ambition—if they weren’t so ghastly self-satisfied. Look at them in there, playing cards all the blessed afternoon for a silly, ugly painted plate.”

Fliss knew what was inside the tissue paper packages on the mantel.

“Most women play cards. All the women you admire so much have bridge-luncheons.”

“I know, but they play for something worth while; give the proceeds to charities.”

“I’ve seen them playing for money that they couldn’t afford to lose,” answered Ellen.

“Well—even that. My goodness, it’s better to play for money—have real stakes—than to get all worked up and hot and cross over silly cake plates. Oh, I don’t know—the other women are so different, anyway, so much more alive. This is sort of sordid.”

“Um——,” said Ellen noncommittally.

“If I thought,” went on Fliss, “that I would settle down and get like those old harpies, I’d—well, I’d just want to die now,” finished Fliss, with drama.

Ellen did not seem impressed.

“People are different, Fliss,” she said gravely. “They’re nice women—these friends of your ma’s—even if they don’t seem very genteel. And it’s been my experience that it’s best to take folks as you find them.”

“I don’t want to take folks like this—at all. I just want to get away from them.”

“So you do; but your ma likes them. They’re the people she knows best and some of them have been awfully good to her. She was telling me how Mrs. Ellis——”

“I know, Ellen. She probably enjoyed it, too. All those women think about is babies and who’s going to have one next.”

Ellen flushed a little. “That’s awful talk, Fliss.”

“Awful! It’s all you hear. Honestly, I don’t know who’s worst—the women in there or the girls I know. If you get shocked at a little thing like that, you ought to hear the way the girls talk. Marjorie Foster—she’s Marjorie Grant now—who was married last month had all the girls in to tea the other day. And you should hear them talk! All about their husbands—and babies—and such.”

The flush on Ellen’s face had risen to her very eyebrows.

“Well, you needn’t talk it to me, Fliss. I think it’s disgusting. I may be country and all that, but I know what’s decent and I don’t think girls who talk like that are.”

Fliss let it drop. She wondered what Ellen would have said if she could have heard her airing her views at Marjorie Grant’s tea on the way she meant to run marriage.

The crowning event of the afternoon approached—the presentation of the prize—to be followed quickly, as if to forestall the disappointment of the losers, by the “refreshments.” Fliss watched the lady with the highest score receive the tissue paper package with anticipatory smiles and giggling, untie the ribbon and hold the painted plate up for the group to see. There was great admiration, a general close inspection. The booby prize, a box of chocolates, was given and received with even more merriment and the ladies settled back, ready for Fliss to proceed with a folded napkin for each capacious lap. Fliss dropped them with a careless little air of detachment that did not quite pretend to hauteur, but approached it. She did not want to talk to them; serve them if she must, but preserve her aloofness at all costs. But even that was not left to her. It was the same Mrs. Ellis, no doubt with a kind of proprietary interest in this slim, silk-clad girl, whom she had first seen as a red little baby emerging into the world under difficulties, who insisted on detaining her for an intimate bit of conversation.

“You’re getting to be quite a swell, aren’t you, Fliss? I see your name in the papers all the time—running around to dances and all kinds of didoes with real society folks. Must cost a lot to keep that up. How does pa like footing the bills?”

Fliss flushed an angry red and stood, biting her lip. She had to stand still because Mrs. Ellis had a friendly hold on her dress.

“Got your eye on some swell fellow, too, Flissy? No one’s going to be too good for that girl I always said when you were growing up. I knew you’d fly high.”

“Please, Mrs. Ellis.” Fliss detached her dress and marched away, but Mrs. Ellis only laughed.

“Guess I was treading on somebody’s toes then,” she said to Mrs. Horton. “Fliss always was touchy. Has she really got her eye on somebody?”

Her own eye on the kitchen door, Mrs. Horton answered with caution. “Oh, Fliss has lots of beaux. Always has had, since she was a little thing, you know.”

They turned the talk to the excellence of the salad dressing. But when the cakes came in, Fliss did not reappear. It was Ellen who passed them. “I won’t go in there again!” Fliss had declared. “Not for anything on earth. No, I won’t, Ellen, I couldn’t stand it.”

She was on the point of tears and Ellen’s quick sympathy saw how overwrought she was. So she passed the cakes herself. Fliss was grateful enough to wipe the dishes, and as she and Ellen worked they heard the voices of the departing guests raised in high cordiality to their hostess and the door shutting on one after another.

Mrs. Horton came out, her face beaming. “Your salad was elegant, Ellen, and they had a real nice time, though I must say I was surprised at Mrs. Hyland’s getting the prize because she doesn’t play a very good game. However, she said a cake plate was the thing of all things she wanted. Where’d you go to, Fliss?”

“I couldn’t stand that old Mrs. Ellis.”

But Mrs. Horton was on the high tide of her big day and Fliss did not greatly disturb her. “Oh, she meant all right. You mustn’t mind what old friends say. Well, here’s your father.”

Mr. Horton came slowly into the kitchen and smiled at Ellen.

“Quite a party, eh?”

“And your supper will be late,” said Ellen, “but it won’t be long now.”

It was equally surprising to the three Hortons to have supper at all, but Ellen cleared her kitchen of them—Mrs. Horton to change her garb, Fliss to finish the red dress and Mr. Horton to read his paper while she prepared the meal. Half an hour later they all sat down to supper as if there had been no party—no left-over sandwiches, but hot rolls and meat and coffee. It was curious to see how they all reacted to it, and as they became better fed became also more definite personalities. Mrs. Horton insisted on doing the fresh batch of dishes, her husband became actually talkative on the subject of the railroad strike, even though no one listened, and the sharp edge of Fliss’s manner softened perceptibly.

Ellen did not notice or reflect on what she had done. It was all of a normal day’s work for her. But she kissed Fliss as she left and there was a trace of pity in her eyes. Going back through the city, she stopped at the gay windows to look at clothes displayed there that were pretty like Fliss herself—gay like Fliss. As she looked, she sighed. But when she approached the house of her employer her face took on a look of satisfaction. There were lights in the living-room. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison were back from their theater party, and as she went past the long windows Ellen saw them—Cecily curled up in a big chair, her evening coat thrown back, and Dick sitting on the arm of the chair fondling his wife’s hair. It was a pretty picture—and pleasantly real. Ellen wound her alarm clock and set her bread with great satisfaction. She loved the convenient, pretty kitchen. As she mounted the back stairs quietly, the lights in the living-room still burned.

“Did you have an awfully good time to-night?” Cecily was asking.

“Didn’t you?”

“Yes, except I’m always glad to get home. It doesn’t seem as if we had much chance to be home these days.”

“No—three nights this week—and to-morrow night, I meant to tell you. I told Mollie Heathcote that I was sure we could join them at the Palladium.”

“Dick, why on earth? I was going to have the most heavenly evening here.”

Dick looked perplexed. “Why, she wanted us and I knew we didn’t have anything on and it didn’t occur to me to say no.”

Cecily sighed.

“The Palladium is rather fun, sometimes,” suggested Dick.

“I suppose it is, but—well, any place is fun where we can be together.”

“Of course, dear. I’ll call Mollie up, though, if you like and tell her I forgot that we were to be busy.”

“No, don’t do that. Mollie’s a dear and I wouldn’t like to play a trick on her. We’ll go.”

“You know we won’t be going about like this all our married life. Just now we’re a novelty as a couple, but we’ll get to the slippered stage. Especially——”

“Especially,” agreed Cecily, with a tender little laugh.

“And now,” said Dick, jumping off the chair, “as the good Lady Macbeth said—to bed! And may the good days of domesticity thicken around us, shutting out all ribald pleasure!”

CHAPTER VIII

“The one over there smiling at Dick Harrison.”

The Craigs and Fliss laughed together. “Why, that’s his wife!”

“Of course,” said Matthew. “I’d forgotten he was married. He did it up in haste and I was East all last spring. Her name was Moore, wasn’t it?”

“Good-looking, isn’t she?”

“Very.”

He looked again at Cecily. “Funny—I haven’t seen a girl who looked like that in a long while.”

“How do you mean?”

“Dick Harrison is a lucky wretch, as usual.”

“He’s been vamped,” said Fliss. “Come over and I’ll introduce you to her.” It was one of those openings which Fliss could never resist.

“Here’s a man who has been begging to meet you,” she said a moment later to Cecily. She might have said more, but she was not quite free with Cecily yet.

Cecily gave Matthew her hand and the shadow of the smile that she had given Dick. Then, as the music began and Fliss and Dick danced away, the Heathcotes followed suit.

“I’d ask you to dance,” apologized Matthew, “but I’m rotten at it.”

“I’m tired of it, anyway. I was just wondering if I was getting middle-aged.”

“Only in the first stages, I should judge.”

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“I assure you I won’t. I was looking at you from the other side of the room and thinking that it was strange that I didn’t want to laugh. Most girls do affect me that way. Do you mind if I ask you something? Are you an ardent anything?”

Cecily looked bewildered.

“I mean feminist, sociologist, politician—have you a heavy purpose?”

“Dick,” said Cecily definitely.

“There you are. I knew it. I hadn’t seen a girl look at a man in years as you looked at Dick. Men aren’t the heavy interests of women any more.”

“Nonsense. It seems to me girls aren’t interested in anything else.”

“You don’t understand me. I used the wrong word anyhow. Girls are interested enough in men, but not singly in a man. That’s what I mean. You don’t see that ’till death do us part’ look around on girls’ faces.”

“Are you just being silly?”

“Probably,” Matthew grinned, “but I expressed myself anyway. It did me good. I feel that I have made a real contribution to thought.”

Cecily looked at him. He was older than Dick, she thought, probably approaching forty, though his face might be older than his age warranted. It had lines set on a skin that was hardly ready for them. It might have been a discouraged face, or a sad face, but the eyes kept it from being that. They were too interested, too alert for sadness or despondency. She liked the smile in his gray eyes. She liked his strong, alert figure. It lacked Dick’s lean athleticism and he was heavy about the shoulders as a man near forty might be, but he had the appearance of power. “Have you been amusing Fliss Horton with contributions to thought?”

“No. I have merely stepped on her feet. But I like to look at her. She’s so immensely vigorous and vigor in frail things is always inspiring, isn’t it?”

“I wonder if that’s what I feel about her.”

“Maybe. Watch her now. Watch her amusing your husband. She’s working at it hard.”

“He is amused,” said Cecily. “I can tell by the way his eyes slant down at her. He likes her.”

“That must be,” said Matthew, reflectively, “just the way she was working on me the other night. I had the most insistent desire to be amused again, so I got up this party.”

“You’re hardly gracious.”

He was suddenly different. “I didn’t mean to be rude, Mrs. Harrison. I was only thinking aloud. You mustn’t think I don’t feel immensely obliged to Miss Horton—awfully grateful to her for being willing to put up with me for an evening.”

“Of course,” said Cecily, “I didn’t think you were rude.”

“Do you know that I used to be quite a friend of your husband?”

“Used to be? I remember writing your name on an invitation to our reception.”

“Only I was out of town and missed it. Don’t you think that, because I did miss it, I’m entitled to see more of you now, to make up for what I lost?”

Dick, coming back to the table again, bore him out. “I remember telling Cecily that I was going to bring you to see her when you got back to town. He’s a great fellow, Cecily. One of our leading politicians—one of these amateur European generals! Never lets it interfere with business though, do you, Matt?”

Fliss and Matthew wandered back to their own table and Matthew, devoting himself to Fliss, apparently forgot the sudden interest he had taken in Cecily. He gave all his attention to Fliss, took her home, flattered her, laughed with her—gave Fliss the tingle of a thoroughly successful evening. Then he wandered home and read a book on French politics until he was half asleep. The European political situation was absorbing him these days since the war had begun. His rooms were full of war stuff, both English and French; “Land and Water,” full of Hilaire Belloc’s guarded prophecies, dozens of pamphlets, maps.

It was characteristic of him that he could read French—not in translation, not with the help of a dictionary, but fluently, with enjoyment and understanding. He could read it because he had wanted to so much and he understood the technique of wanting things until they became realized desires. He had wanted knowledge, success and friends and he had these things now in spite of an education cut cruelly short when he was sixteen, in spite of lack of money and of having been born in the obscurity of a little village. Through poverty and opposition he had quietly pushed his way and established himself. Carrington did not question him. He had been a successful young man when he came there. He had come to look after mining interests near Carrington and smaller interests in the city. Now he was wealthy and useful to the city in a hundred ways. They wanted him in politics and he gave some of the time which he might have had for leisure to that. But he would not let political interests absorb him. He advised, did some speaking, lent his influence where it seemed fit and let it go at that.

He had apparently never yet needed women or he would have managed to get the one he wanted, if he had followed the simple processes of his philosophy. Or perhaps he found his companionship with women in the books he read. On his laden, well-used bookshelves there were so many stories, poems, thoughts of beautiful women and noble women. Little contemporary fiction—it was the library of a man who had guided himself through literature, full of books which were cross references to each other, books which showed how his mind, setting out to pursue some line of thought, had gone off at a tangent on some philosophical quest. He needed no order or cataloguing of all his books; he could always put his hand on the one he wanted.

The rooms in which he lived were on the second floor of an old house which had been turned into an apartment building. There was an old-fashioned alcove in his living-room, and the circular walls were lined with books except where a long window cut into the structure of shelves. The rest of the living-room was furnished with a taste and skill which hit just the right note of spaciousness without seeming bare—a few easy-chairs, a dark red Turkish rug and a black oak table. It was on this table that he ate his meals, prepared for him by the Swedish woman who cooked and cleaned for him. There was a bedroom which was furnished almost with ascetic plainness, and that was all except for the kitchen and the room occupied by the cook. It was not an elaborate establishment for as wealthy a man as Matthew Allenby, but he had lived there in complete satisfaction for five years.

A week after the encounter at the Palladium he called on the Harrisons and found them at home. They were pleasant enough in their welcome and before half an hour he had justified himself for breaking in on one of their deliberately domestic evenings. He knew how to be entertaining, how to talk business with Dick in such a way that Cecily was not excluded from the conversation, how to make the conversation broaden itself into interesting fields outside of the specific ones in which the talk might begin. Dick enjoyed himself hugely. He had always liked Matthew Allenby and had various plans for business deals with him. Matthew was some years older and had drifted into the companionship of older men than Dick.

They talked war for the most part, as people did in 1915—with abstract enthusiasm, impersonal analysis. Then Cecily played for them. She played well, without brilliance, but with an accuracy and feeling for melody that the convent was directly responsible for. It was less her playing than the fact of her playing, the picture she made at the piano, singing and playing softly in the light of the tall candles which framed her, that was charming. The men watched her silently from across the room.

“I don’t want in the least to go home,” said Matthew, as Cecily turned to them finally. “I could sit here for days and days sipping this very remarkable liqueur that your husband is offering up and watching a very perfect picture of what homes may be—and rarely are outside of the Victrola advertisements.”

“Haven’t you a home, Mr. Allenby?”

“Two of them. One is a little frame house in Indiana where my mother lives and where she insists she will always live. It is a very small house, atrociously furnished and heated by a Franklin stove and a coal range, but she likes it. That’s my home—maternal home, homestead—the place where I don’t have to knock or ring a bell, you know. The other home is on the second floor of the big green house at River Street and Fourth Avenue. It is a pleasant place, a very pleasant place, but it lacks life in a way. All bachelor places do. Bachelor places are safe, but they never quite touch the high spots. A bachelor never lives a very rich life and his home reflects that.”

“But you think bachelor places are safer?” asked Dick smiling.

“It’s always safer to be alone than to risk close companionship, isn’t it?”

“I know what you mean,” said Cecily. “I never could see why homes were considered dull places. People in relations to each other always seem wonderful to me. My mother’s home was always exciting to me. There were my mother with my two stepbrothers—who worship her just as I do—and mother and I and mother and father—all of us reacting on each other. Then when I began to keep my own home I found it even more interesting. I am completely responsible for everything that happens in the house; that’s quite a lot of excitement.”

“Of course you’re new at it,” said Dick. “In time habit may wear off the edge of looking after my meals and my comfort.”

“No, I will not let the edge wear off!”

“You won’t,” said Matthew. “Life will deepen for you.”

It was odd that, though Cecily was looking at her husband, Matthew was reassuring her. Dick laughed a little. He thought the conversation somewhat obscure and over-personal and poured Matthew another tiny glass of cordial.

“Well, I’ve nothing to say for bachelor living. Here’s to charming wives, Allenby, and may you find one soon. Cecily will help you.”

They met again within a week. Cecily was walking home from the convent one afternoon, where she sometimes stopped to see Mother Fénelon, and she met Matthew at his very doorstep. Cecily felt curiously well-acquainted with him and was glad when he asked to walk with her. She told him about the convent and how much she liked to stop there for a few minutes to feel again the atmosphere of the cloister.

“And then you go away with your appetite for home whetted?”

“Not because the convent is less attractive than a home in its own way, but they set each other off so stunningly.”

He laughed in great amusement.

“You have a way of making me most confidential,” said Cecily. They had reached the brick walk leading up to her house. “I’d ask you in, but it’s too near dinner time. Some day you must come to dinner with us.”

“Any day.” He went briskly down the street and Cecily forgot him. She was not feeling quite so gay as she had sounded or tried to sound. Strange things seemed to be happening to her. She had recently gone to her stepfather’s house and spent an afternoon in his library looking up important medical words and finding little information. She supposed the things that were happening meant that she was going to have a baby and she was frightened. So she could not tell Dick. She felt terribly ashamed of her own fears. They had talked about it and it had seemed very beautiful and fine in talking. Now when it had to be done—done by her, through her, with these strange processes diagrammed in encyclopedias—it was different. It was very different. It seemed to cut her off from Dick instead of bringing her closer—it absorbed her thoughts. And with the fears went this strange weakness and dizziness, so foreign to her. That was why she had gone to the convent. And there the little white chapel had seemed to ring with the words of the Jesuit priest in his last instruction, “the sacrament which has for its purpose the bringing up of children.” Cecily’s whole soul seemed to rebel. Marriage was not that. Marriage was Dick—Dick to play with, talk with—Dick to make a home for—Dick to love. This other business was not Dick. The chapel helped her not at all.