I

“They say it wasn’t a stroke,” said Isabel, “but of course it was.”

“Mrs. Lester told me it was acute indigestion,” said Mrs. Ward.

“And Rosalie told me it was brain fatigue,” said Isabel.

“I don’t know what Bert Lancaster’s ever done to fatigue his brain,” said Mrs. Ward.

Jane laughed, in spite of her concern for Muriel. They were all sitting around the first October fire in Jane’s little Lakewood living-room. Her mother and Isabel had motored out from town to take tea with her and they were all discussing, of course, Bert Lancaster’s sudden seizure at the Commercial Club banquet the night before.

“It must have been awful,” said Isabel, “falling over like that, right into his own champagne glass, in the middle of a speech.”

“They say he was forbidden champagne,” said Mrs. Ward. “Dr. Bancroft’s wife told me that the doctor had warned him last winter that he must give up alcohol.”

“Have some more tea, Isabel,” said Jane.

“I oughtn’t to, but I will,” said Isabel. At forty-one Isabel was valiantly struggling against increasing pounds. “No sugar, Jane.” She opened her purse and taking out a small bottle dropped three tablets of saccharine into her cup.

“Of course he’s pretty young for a stroke,” said Mrs. Ward.

“He’s fifty-five,” said Isabel. “He was fifty-five the third of August.”

“It’s frightful for Muriel,” said Jane.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Ward. “Perhaps it’s providential. Of course if he’s disabled⁠—”

“If he lives, he will be,” said Isabel. “Sooner or later. If you have one stroke, you always have another.”

“Well, he may not live,” said Mrs. Ward. “He can’t have any constitution to rely on after the life he’s led.”

“What do you think Muriel would do, Jane?” asked Isabel. “Do you think she’d really marry Cyril Fortune?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane.

“She was off at the Scandals with him when it happened,” said Mrs. Ward. “They paged her at the theatre.”

“You mark my words,” said Isabel, taking a piece of toast and scraping the buttered cinnamon off it, “whenever Bert Lancaster dies, Muriel will marry the man of the moment the day after the funeral. Not that I think she’s really in love with Cyril. I never thought she was in love with Sam or Binky or Roger or any of them.”

“Not even with Sam?” said Mrs. Ward.

“Not really,” said Isabel with conviction. “Rosalie always said she wasn’t. I think Muriel is really just in love with herself. It keeps up her self-confidence to have a young man sighing gustily around the home. But just the same, if Bert Lancaster dies tonight, I bet she marries Cyril Fortune before Christmas.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Ward. “Muriel would do everything decently. She’d stay in mourning for at least a year. She’d have to show the proper respect for her son’s sake.”

“They’ve sent for young Albert,” said Isabel, “to come home from Saint Paul’s.”

“Well, I hope Muriel behaves herself while he’s here,” said Mrs. Ward severely. “He’s fifteen and he’s old enough to notice.”

“That’s just exactly,” said Isabel dreamily, “what you used to say of Flora.”

“Well, she was old enough to notice,” said Mrs. Ward, “but I doubt if she ever did. Lily Furness had a curious magnetism. Somehow she always made you believe the best of her.”

“Flora simply adored her,” said Jane suddenly. “I adored her, myself.”

“Just the same,” said Mrs. Ward, “she had no principle.”

“You don’t know,” said Jane. “Perhaps she went through hell. You can’t help it if you’re not in love with your husband.”

“Every wife with principle,” said Mrs. Ward firmly, “is in love with her husband.”

“Mamma!” cried Isabel. “Don’t be ridiculous! How many wives are? But what I say is, even if you’re not, you don’t have to take a lover⁠—”

“No,” said Jane, “of course you don’t. But I can see how you might.”

“Don’t talk like that!” said Mrs. Ward sharply. “I don’t know where you girls get your ideas! When I was your age I wouldn’t even have said those words⁠—‘take a lover’! And you two sit there talking as if it were actually done!”

“But it is done, Mamma,” said Isabel. “Not very often, of course, but sometimes. Lily Furness did it, even in your day. And you know, in your black heart, that you’re wondering whether Muriel hasn’t gone and done it in ours.”

“I am not!” said Mrs. Ward indignantly. “I shouldn’t think of making such an accusation against Muriel. All I say is, she isn’t very discreet. She gets herself talked about. There’s been a lot of gossip about Muriel. And everyone knows that where there’s so much smoke, there’s bound to be some fire.”

“Well, what do you think you’re saying now?” said Isabel. “What are, or aren’t you, accusing Muriel of this minute?”

Mrs. Ward looked slightly bewildered.

“I don’t like the way young people speak out nowadays,” she said. “And I don’t like your attitude toward wrongdoing. You and Jane are both perfectly willing to condone whatever Muriel has done. At least, in my day, we all made Lily Furness feel she was a guilty woman. We took the marriage vows seriously.”

“I take the marriage vows seriously. Mamma,” said Jane gently. “But I can understand the people who break them. At least,” she added doubtfully, “I think I can. I think I can understand just how it might happen.”

“Anyone could understand how it might happen in Muriel’s case,” said Isabel. “Bert’s a perfect old rip. There’s a certain poetic justice in the thought of him, standing in Mr. Furness’s shoes⁠—”

Mrs. Ward rose with dignity from her chair.

“Come, Isabel,” she said, “I’m going home. I’m not going to listen to you girls any longer. I only hope you don’t talk like this before Robin and Stephen. It’s a woman’s duty to keep up her husband’s standards.”

Jane and Isabel burst into laughter.

“Robin and Stephen!” exclaimed Isabel. “Imagine either of them on the loose!”

“They keep up our standards,” said Jane, as she kissed her mother. Mrs. Ward still looked a trifle bewildered.

“Put on your heavy coat,” said Jane, as they all turned toward the door. “Don’t let her catch cold, Isabel.”

“I won’t,” said Isabel. “Mind that rug, Mamma. The floor is slippery.”

“You girls think I’m just an old lady,” said Mrs. Ward, as Jane opened the front door. “I wish you’d both remember that I took care of myself for about forty-five years before you thought you were old enough to give me advice.” She climbed, a little clumsily, into the waiting motor.

“Give my love to Papa,” said Jane. “And Isabel⁠—when you telephone Rosalie, ask if there’s anything I can do for Muriel.”

“I will,” said Isabel. “There probably will be. Muriel never does anything for herself.”

The car crunched slowly around the gravel driveway. Jane watched it to the entrance. Curious, she thought, the gap between the points of view of different generations. The facts of life were always the same, but people thought about them so differently. New thoughts, reflected Jane, about the same old actions. Was it progress or merely change? Sex was a loaded pistol, thought Jane, thrust into the hand of humanity. Her mother’s generation had carried it carefully, fearful of a sudden explosion. Her generation, and Isabel’s, waved it nonchalantly about, but, after all, with all their carelessness, they didn’t fire it off any oftener than their parents had. What if the next generation should take to shooting? Shooting straight regardless of their target. As Jane entered the front hall, the telephone was ringing.

She stood still, suddenly, on the doormat. That might be Jimmy, she thought instantly, and despised herself for the thought. Jane hated to think that she had been back in the Lakewood house for three weeks and that, in all that time, the telephone had never rung without awakening in her unwilling brain the thought that it might be Jimmy. For Jimmy had never telephoned. He had vanished completely out of her life that morning in the La Salle Street Station. At first she had been only relieved to find that the voice, whosever it was, trickling over the wire, was not his. Jane had been firmly determined to discipline Jimmy for that outrageous refusal to lunch with Stephen on the day of his arrival. But, as the days passed and she did not hear from him, her relief had been subtly tempered first with curiosity then with concern, and, at last, with indignation. Jimmy ought to have telephoned. It was rude of him not to. She had really felt, after those intimate hours on the back platform of the Twentieth Century, that she meant something to Jimmy, that he really liked her, that he was depending on her for support and diversion during his visit to Chicago. And then⁠—he had not telephoned. By not telephoning he had made Jane feel rather a fool. For Jimmy had meant something to her, she had really liked him. Of course he was irritating and she had known he was not to be counted on, but still⁠—she had thought that she had read an honest admiration in his ironic eyes, she had felt that he was a very amusing person, she had even wondered just what she had better do in case Jimmy’s honest admiration became a trifle embarrassing. She had solemnly assured herself, on her arrival at Lakewood, that if she were firm and pleasantly disciplinary she could, of course, handle Jimmy, who was a dear and Agnes’s husband, but not very wise, perhaps, and obviously in the frame of mind in which he could easily be led astray by the flutter of a petticoat. And then⁠—he had not telephoned.

“Mrs. Carver,” Miss Parrot’s pleasant voice called down the stairs, “Mr. Carver wants you on the wire.”

Jane walked to the telephone in the pantry.

“Yes, dear?” she said.

“I can’t get out for dinner this evening,” said Stephen. “Muriel wants me to come up and talk business with her. It seems Bert was just advising her about some investments when he was stricken. She’s got some bonds he wanted her to sell immediately.”

“Of course go, dear,” said Jane quickly. Stephen would be very helpful to Muriel. Everyone turned to Stephen when in trouble. And Muriel had no one to advise her except Freddy Waters, her volatile brother-in-law. Unless you counted Cyril Fortune, who was a young landscape gardener recently rumoured to have lost twenty thousand dollars in a flyer in oil. He wouldn’t be much to lean on in a financial crisis.

“I’ll be out on the ten-ten,” said Stephen. “Don’t be lonely.”

“I won’t,” said Jane. “I’ve got letters to write. Give my love to Muriel.”

As Jane turned from the telephone she heard the whirr of a motor. That would be the children coming home from school. The car called for them at the playground every afternoon at five. Jane was always afraid to let them walk home alone through the traffic. The country lane on which her house had been built, fourteen years before, had long since become a suburban highroad. As she entered the hall again, they burst in at the front door. The cocker-spaniel puppy tumbled down the stairs to meet them.

“Mumsy!” called Jenny. “Oh, there you are! I’ve made the basketball team and I need some gym shoes!”

“I’m going to take my rabbits to school for the Animal Fair!” cried little Steve.

“Can I ask Jack and Belle to come out on Saturday?” said Cicily. Jack and Belle were Isabel’s seventeen- and thirteen-year-old son and daughter. No weekend was complete without them.

“When can we get the gym shoes?” said Jenny.

“I need a cage for the rabbits,” said little Steve.

“I’ve got to have the gym shoes by Monday, Mumsy,” said Jenny.

“Do you think I could make a cage out of a peach crate?” said little Steve.

“Hush!” said Jane. “Pick up your coat, Jenny, and hang it in the closet. Steve⁠—your books don’t belong on the floor.

“Yes, Cicily, you can telephone Aunt Isabel tonight and ask them.”

“Mumsy, where can I find a peach crate?”

“Be quiet!” said Jane. “Now go upstairs, all of you, and wash! If you get your homework done before supper, I’ll read King Arthur stories to you tonight. Daddy’s not coming home.”

The children clattered up the staircase. Jane walked into the living-room with a sigh. They were terribly noisy. They never seemed to behave like other people’s children. She sat down at her desk and began to look over the afternoon mail. An invitation to dine in town with Muriel before an evening musical⁠—that would be off, now, of course. A bill from the plumber for repairing the faucets in the maid’s bathroom. A note from the chairman of the Miscellaneous Committee of the Chicago Chatter Club asking her to write a funny paper on “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” for the December meeting. A note from the chairman of the Literary Committee of the Lakewood Woman’s Club, asking her to write a serious paper on “Oriental Art” for the Spring Festival. A bill from the Russian Peasant Industries for smocking Cicily’s and Jenny’s new winter frocks. A notice from the Lakewood Village Council, announcing that Cleanup Week began on Monday next. A note from Steve’s teacher, suggesting that she see that he spend more time on his arithmetic. An advertisement of a Rummage Sale for the benefit of Saint George’s Church. A bill from the Lakewood Gas and Coke Company for the new laundry stove. A notice that her report would be due as chairman of the Playground Committee at the annual meeting of the Village Improvement Society next Wednesday night.

Jane pushed the mail into a pigeonhole. She felt she could not bear to cope with it. She felt she could not bear to cope with the winter that lay before her. Which was, of course, ridiculous. Jane knew that it would be just like all other winters⁠—fun enough, when you came to live it. But always in October, reestablished in Lakewood after the break of the Eastern summer, Jane wondered why she and Stephen chose to live just the way they did. Lakewood was good for the children, of course. No longer country, not much more rural than the Pine Street of her childhood, but better than Isabel’s town apartment, nicer, even, than Muriel’s smart city residence overlooking the lake.

Still⁠—suburban life was pretty awful. Narrow, confining, in spite of the physical asset of its wider horizons. Jane rose from her desk and walked to a western window. The sun was setting over the Skokie Valley. An October sunset, red and cold, behind her copper oak woods, beyond the tanned haystacks in the distant meadows. A western sunset, violent and vivid, glorifying the flat swamps with golden light, setting the tranquil clouds in the wide, unbroken sky aflame with rosy fire. The Skokie always looked like that, on autumn evenings. It was lovely, too, on winter nights, a snowy plane beneath the sparkling stars. In the spring, when the Skokie overflowed its banks and the swamps were wet and the moonlight paled the pink blossoms of the apple tree at the foot of the garden, it was perhaps most lovely of all. Jane was lucky to live there⁠—lucky to have that picture to look out on, always, outside her window. Still⁠—

Jane watched the burnished sun sink slowly beneath the flat horizon, the low clouds lose their colour and turn darkly purple, the high clouds flame with pink and pure translucent gold. Then they, too, faded into wisps of grey. The western sky was lemon-coloured now. A crescent moon was tangled in the oak boughs.

Jane turned back to her desk and stood looking at the illuminated quotation from Stevenson that hung over it in a silver frame⁠—the work of Jenny’s hand in the sixth grade of the Lakewood Progressive School, a gift of last Christmas.

“To make this earth, our hermitage,
A cheerful and a changeful page,
God’s bright and intricate device
Of days and seasons doth suffice.”

“What a damn lie!” thought Jane, and turned at the sound of a step in the doorway. Jimmy Trent, his hat in his hand, his fiddle-case under his arm, stood smiling at her on the threshold. The children had left the front door open, of course. He had come in quietly⁠—

“Hello!” said Jimmy. “How’s every little thing?”

“Jimmy!” said Jane. “Come in! Sit down. I’m awfully glad to see you!”

“That’s quite as it should be,” said Jimmy. “May I stay to dinner?”

“Of course,” said Jane. Then, before she could stop herself, “Why didn’t you telephone?”

“Why didn’t you telephone me?” said Jimmy, tossing his hat on a table and placing the fiddle-case beside it. “You could have, you know, at the Daily News.”

Jane thought her reason for not telephoning Jimmy might sound a little foolish. If you said you thought a man should telephone you first, it really seemed as if you took the fact that he had not telephoned quite seriously.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jane; “I’ve been busy.”

“So have I,” said Jimmy. “Awfully busy. It’s the first time in six years that I’ve cut loose from a woman’s apron strings in a big city. I like Chicago.”

“Do you like your job?” said Jane severely. Jimmy looked white, she thought, and just a little tired.

“My job?” said Jimmy. “Oh, yes. I like my job. It isn’t very arduous.”

“I hope you’re working at it,” said Jane.

“Now, Jane,” said Jimmy sweetly, “lay off salvation. I get enough of that at home.” He strolled over to the hearthrug and took his stand upon it, his back toward the smouldering fire. He was still smiling. “I met Stephen at noon today. I met him, I regret to tell you, Jane, in the University Club bar. Everyone was talking about this Lancaster’s stroke. Stephen said he was going up to see Mrs. Lancaster this evening. So I thought I’d come out with my fiddle and offer you a little entertainment. I want to play you Debussy’s ‘La Fille aux Cheveux de Laine.’ ”

“How nice of you,” said Jane a little uncertainly.

“Like Debussy?” asked Jimmy.

“Yes,” said Jane.

“Me, too,” said Jimmy.

There was a moment of silence. Jane suddenly realized how dark the room had grown. She turned on a lamp and gat down in her chair by the fireside.

“This is nice,” said Jimmy. “This is very nice.” He was looking interestedly around the chintz-hung living-room. The panelled walls, the books, the Steinway, the few good pieces of mahogany furniture all seemed to meet with his approval. “It’s just like you, Jane. Modern, but not morbid.” He sank into Stephen’s armchair across the hearthrug and picked up the October Question Mark from the table at his elbow. The Question Mark was the monthly magazine of the Lakewood Progressive School. Jimmy idly scanned a photograph of the football squad for a moment in silence and dropped the Question Mark back upon the table. His eye fell upon the copy of the King Arthur stories. “Not at all morbid,” he repeated. His eyes were twinkling as they met Jane’s.

“I must go up and dress for dinner,” said Jane, rising suddenly. “Here’s the newspaper if you’d like to read it until I come down.”

“Are you glad I came?” The question arrested her abruptly in the doorway. Curiously enough, Jane was not quite sure. But⁠—

“Very glad,” said Jane evenly. She mounted the staircase rather slowly. She wasn’t quite sure about the gladness. Nevertheless, she was inexplicably determined to look her best that evening. She would put on that red Poiret tea-gown she had so foolishly bought at a bargain sale last June. She had often regretted that folly. What use had Jane at Lakewood or Gull Rocks for a red Poiret tea-gown?

“Miss Parrot,” said Jane, pausing in the playroom doorway, “I want Steve to wear his blue suit this evening. And tell Cicily and Jenny, please, to put on their new yellow smocks.” On entering her bedroom she rang for the waitress.

“Sarah,” she said, “Mr. Carver will not be home for dinner, but Mr. Trent will stay. We’ll have cocktails. And some of the good sauterne at table. And creme de menthe, please, after the coffee. Be sure and see that the ice is cracked fine. You can pound it in a towel. It ought to be almost pulverized.”

Jane walked slowly to her closet and took out the red tea-gown. Jimmy was something different at Lakewood. Still, she wasn’t quite sure about the gladness. She wished that Agnes were downstairs with him. When Jane realized how much she wished that, she felt better about the gladness. She was even willing to admit to herself how very glad she was.

II

“Let’s play parcheesi,” said little Steve.

“I have to telephone Aunt Isabel,” said Cicily.

“I haven’t done my practising,” said Jenny.

They were all sitting around the living-room fire. Jane was presiding over the little silver coffee service on the table at her knee. Sarah was passing the creme de menthe. The little cut-glass goblets, filled with vivid green liquid, looked very festive and frivolous, on the small silver tray. Jimmy grasped his with a sigh of satisfaction. Miss Parrot took hers with the deprecatory gesture of every trained nurse accepting an alcoholic beverage. Jane sipped hers with the comforting realization that the ice was perfectly pulverized.

“Do you like parcheesi?” said little Steve to Jimmy.

“I love it,” said Jimmy, “but I hurt my finger yesterday and I’m afraid I couldn’t throw the dice.”

“Anyway,” said Jenny, “I have to practise.”

“Not tonight,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “Day before yesterday I hurt my ear and sudden noises pain it dreadfully.”

Jenny and Cicily and Miss Parrot all laughed uproariously at his nonsense.

“Well,” said Cicily, “I do have to telephone Aunt Isabel.”

“That’s a fine idea,” said Jimmy approvingly. “And Miss Parrot looks to me like a perfect parcheesi fan. I think it would be very nice, Cicily, if Steve got the board all ready in another room so that, when you had finished telephoning your aunt, you and she and Jenny and Steve could all play parcheesi together, while your mother sat here in the firelight and told me what to do for my finger and my ear.”

Miss Parrot, having finished her creme de menthe, rose with a smile. She was obviously quite captivated by Jimmy.

“Come up to the playroom, children,” she said. “I’ll play parcheesi with you.”

“And don’t I have to practise?” asked Jenny jubilantly.

“Not if Mr. Trent’s ear is hurting him,” smiled Jane.

Jenny threw Jimmy a grateful smile. Steve dragged Miss Parrot from the room. Cicily followed with Jenny.

“I can’t believe,” said Jimmy, as he lit a cigarette, “that those great children are yours.”

“They are,” said Jane briefly.

“Cicily’s a perfect heartbreaker,” said Jimmy.

“I’m afraid she will be,” said Jane.

“Why ‘afraid’?” asked Jimmy.

“I don’t think breaking hearts is a very rewarding occupation,” said Jane.

“Oh⁠—someone else can always mend them,” said Jimmy lightly. He twinkled across at her, through a blue streak of cigarette smoke. “You know that, don’t you, Jane?”

“I’ve never broken any hearts,” said Jane, smiling. “So really I don’t.”

“Well⁠—experience is the best teacher,” said Jimmy affably.

Sarah reentered the room to remove the coffee tray. She picked up the cups and the little cut-glass goblets with the silent efficiency of the perfect servant and retired noiselessly into the hall.

“It moves on greased wheels, doesn’t it, Jane?” said Jimmy.

“What does?” asked Jane.

“Your life,” said Jimmy.

“Yes,” said Jane. “But I grease them.”

“I suppose you do,” said Jimmy. “But you don’t mind it, do you?”

“I get awfully sick of it,” said Jane honestly.

Jimmy watched her for a moment in silence behind the cigarette smoke.

“Sick of what?” he said presently.

“Sick,” said Jane earnestly, “of greasing wheels. Sick of running the house and bossing the servants and dressing the children. Sick of seeing that everything looks pretty and everything goes right. Sick of seeing that the living-room is dusted before ten every morning and that dinner is served on the stroke of seven every night. Sometimes I wonder what’s the use of it all. Sometimes I wish that Stephen and I could just tear up our roots and buy a couple of knapsacks and put the children in a covered wagon and start out to see the world. Just wander, you know, for a year or two. Wander everywhere, before we’re too old to do it. Not bother about anything. Not care. Not do anything we didn’t really want to. I suppose you think I’m crazy!” She broke off abruptly.

“Crazy?” said Jimmy. “I think you’re just right. There’s a lot of the nomad in me, you know. I guess the tent got into my blood. If I’d been born a gypsy instead of a Methodist minister’s son, I’d never have broken home ties. Golly!”⁠—he waved his cigarette with enthusiasm⁠—“I’d like to go round the world. Round and round it in circles. Round it in every latitude. Let’s do it, Jane! Let’s surprise Stephen tonight! You leave a note on the pincushion and I’ll send a wire to Agnes. ‘Gone⁠—to points unknown!’ We’ll set out for the Golden Gate⁠—I guess we can buy those knapsacks in the Northwestern Station⁠—and sail for the South Sea Islands and drift over to Siam and Burma and India and on up to China⁠—and by that time Stephen and Agnes will have divorced us and I’ll make you an honest woman, Jane, in a little Chinese shrine with the temple bells ringing overhead, and we’ll wander on, through Tibet and Afghanistan and Persia to Asia Minor, or maybe up to Russia, and then down through the civilized countries, which won’t be so nice, but where the food will be much better, to Africa, Jane! To the Dark Continent. And maybe when we get there we’ll stay⁠—stay in the village of some cannibal king who never even heard of a musical critic or a suburban housewife, where concertos for the violin are unknown and living-rooms are never dusted! How about it, Jane?” He paused out of breath and looked engagingly over at her.

“It sounds very alluring,” said Jane, “but a little uncomfortable.”

“Comfort!” scoffed Jimmy. “You don’t really care about comfort!”

“Yes, I do!” cried Jane. “When I haven’t got it! And so do you. I don’t know you so awfully well, Jimmy, but I know you well enough to know that. You care so much about comfort that you won’t get up in the morning and make your own bed for Agnes! You won’t ride on a milk train instead of the Twentieth Century! I don’t think you’d be so good in a jungle. When I go to a jungle, I think I’ll take Stephen. He’d be very capable there.”

“I’m sure,” said Jimmy cheerfully, “he’d have sanitary plumbing installed in a fortnight. Nevertheless, something tells me that Stephen is no gypsy. If you ever see the Dark Continent with Stephen, you’ll see it in the discreet light shed on it by Thomas Cook and Sons! But as for me, with or without Agnes, I’m going to see the world before I die.”

“Mumsy”⁠—it was little Steve on the threshold⁠—“we want to kiss you good night.”

“Come in,” said Jane. “Come in, all of you.” The three children were lingering in the doorway.

“How’d the game come out, Steve?” asked Jimmy affably.

“Miss Parrot won,” said Steve gloomily. “She always does.”

“I’m going to send you a set of loaded dice,” said Jimmy benevolently. “Come in, kids, and sit down.” He rose as he spoke. “I want to sing to you.” He had picked up his fiddle-case and was removing the violin. Jane looked up in surprise. Jimmy was a strange mixture of contradictions. The children settled themselves delightedly on the floor near the fire. Jimmy tucked his violin under his chin and tuned it airily as he sauntered across the room.

“It’s an old English ballad,” he said, “and a particular favorite of mine. It appeals to your mother, too, who is really a gypsy at heart. Did you know that, children? There she sits by those polished brass andirons looking very pretty in a French tea-gown, but at heart she’s dancing barefoot by a bonfire in a tattered red shawl⁠—dancing in the dark of the moon to the tinkle of a tambourine. When she married your father, children, she jumped over a broomstick. But later he took up with the bond business. That’s the way most of us get married. Did you know that, Cicily? But later we nearly all of us take up with something else and after that we only use broomsticks to sweep with.”

The children were staring at him in wide-eyed fascination. They were still staring when he began softly to sing:

“There were three gypsies a-come to my door,
And downstairs ran my lady, O!
One sang high and the other sang low,
And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O!

“Then she pulled off her silk-finished gown
And put on hose of leather, O!
The ragged, ragged rags about our door⁠—
She’s gone with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!”

Jimmy paused to smile mockingly at Jane, drawing his bow with a flourish across the strings of his violin.

“It was late last night when my lord came home,
Inquiring for his lady, O!
The servants said, on every hand,
She’s gone with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!

“Come saddle me my milk-white steed
And go and fetch my pony, O!
That I may ride and fetch my bride,
Who is gone with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!

“Then he rode high, and he rode low,
He rode through wood and copses too,
Until he came to an open field
And there he spied his lady, O!

“What makes you leave your house and land
What makes you leave your money, O?
What makes you leave your new-wedded lord,
To go with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O?”

Again Jimmy paused to smile mockingly at Jane and again his bow swept over a string and a note of triumph quivered in the air.

“Oh, what care I for my house and land.
And what care I for my money, O?
What care I for my new-wedded lord,
I’m off with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!”

His bow ran wildly, jubilantly over the high strings, then dropped to a sombre note of accusation.

“Last night you slept on a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
But tonight you sleep in a cold open field,
Along with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!”

Again the bow fluttered over the strings. The recreant lady’s laughter seemed tinkling in the room.

“Oh, what care I for a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
For tonight I shall sleep in a cold open field,
Along with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!”

He dropped his bow abruptly. In the sudden silence Steve’s voice rang out shrill with interest.

“And did she?”

“That lady did,” said Jimmy gravely. “She had the courage of her convictions.”

“And she never went back?” pursued Steve eagerly.

“Oh⁠—that I can’t tell you,” said Jimmy gaily. “The song doesn’t say. I shouldn’t be surprised if she did, though. Lots of ladies do.”

“Children⁠—you must go to bed,” said Jane. “It’s very late.”

“I must go back to town,” said Jimmy. He was putting the violin away in its case.

“Must you?” said Jane. “It’s very early.”

“I think I must,” said Jimmy.

“But we haven’t had any Debussy,” said Jane.

“We’ll have him next time,” smiled Jimmy.

“We’ll have Stephen next time, too,” said Jane.

“That will be delightful,” said Jimmy. The words might have seemed sarcastic if he had not been smiling so pleasantly. Suddenly, hat in hand, he crossed the room. He held out his hand to Jane. “You must make Stephen like me,” he said disarmingly.

“He will,” said Jane. Looking up into Jimmy’s charming faun-like face, Jane, at the moment, could not imagine anyone not liking him.

“I hope he will, Jane,” said Jimmy. “For I like you.”

“Stephen always likes people who like me,” said Jane loyally.

“Then that’s just as it should be,” said Jimmy. “When may I come again?”

“How about Tuesday?” said Jane. “Come out to dinner. Take the five-fifty with Stephen.”

“I will,” said Jimmy. “Good night, kids! Now, all together, before I go! Do you like me? The answer is ‘yes’!”

In the resulting clamour, Jimmy made his escape. He threw Jane one last smile from the threshold. As she heard the front door close behind him, Jane walked over to little Steve. For no reason whatever, she kissed him, very warmly.

“What are you smiling at, Mumsy?” said Jenny.

“Nothing,” said Jane. She ran her hand caressingly over Cicily’s fair crinkly hair. She kissed Jenny’s little freckled nose and pushed her toward the door.

“Go to bed, now, all of you,” said Jane. Left to herself, she picked up a book from the table and sat down in her chair to read it. She did not open it, however, but sat softly smiling, her eyes upon the fire. Stephen found her, sitting just like that, when he came home an hour later by the ten-ten.

“Bert’s better,” he said from the doorway, “And Muriel’s in fine shape. She’s taking everything very calmly. Young Albert gets home tomorrow!”

Jane realized that she had not once thought of Muriel since she had left the telephone after talking with Stephen five hours before. She felt suddenly conscious-stricken. She jumped up to help Stephen off with his coat.

“I’m glad,” she said. “Did you fix everything up for her?” Even now, Jane felt she wasn’t really thinking of Muriel. She did not give Stephen time to answer her question. “Jimmy Trent was here for dinner,” she said.

“Jimmy Trent?”

“Yes. He came out unexpectedly. He brought his fiddle and sang to the children.”

“Can he sing?” Stephen was walking across the room to lock the glass doors that opened on the terrace.

“Yes, Quite nicely. He’s very amusing. Stephen⁠—”

Jane hesitated.

“Yes,” said Stephen, fumbling with a door-latch.

Jane did not answer. She had had it on the tip of her tongue to say “Stephen, I think he’s falling for me,” Then she remembered. She remembered the three weeks in which Jimmy had not telephoned. He was probably just getting a rise out of her that evening. Well⁠—anyway, even so, he did not know that he had got it. That was a comfort. Of course he was not falling for her. He was Agnes’s husband and, obviously, a very volatile young man.

“Yes?” said Stephen again, turning from the window.

“Oh⁠—nothing,” said Jane. Stephen turned out the lights.

“If Bert lives,” said Jane, “we ought to ask young Albert out here for the weekend. It would relieve Muriel, and Cicily would love to have him. Jack and Belle are coming.”

“All right,” said Stephen. Jane preceded him up the staircase. The spell invoked by Jimmy was already evaporating. She was glad that she had not said anything silly to Stephen. She was really a very silly woman, thought Jane, as she slipped out of the Poiret tea-gown. Jimmy did not mean anything by all that nonsense. It was just his line.

III

It happened just seven weeks later. It happened Thanksgiving afternoon, out beneath the apple tree beyond the little clump of evergreens at the foot of the garden. Jane was very much surprised when it did.

The seven weeks had been full of incident. She had been seeing Jimmy quite often, of course. He had come out perhaps once a week to dinner. She had lunched with him in town one day and gone with him to a concert that he had had to review for his paper. That was the only time, really, that they had been alone. He usually brought his fiddle when he came out to Lakewood and they had had lots of Debussy and a few more ballads. The children adored him, of course, and he had, somewhat to Jane’s surprise, made rather a hit with Stephen. Jimmy had made rather a hit with everyone, in fact. With her mother and Isabel and Flora and Muriel, who had had him to dinner just as soon as Bert was pronounced out of immediate danger, and declared him charming⁠—much too good, indeed, for Agnes. Mr. Ward had raised the only dissenting voice. And all he had said was, after Jimmy had spent an unusually scintillating evening at the Wards’ dinner-table, that Agnes deserved a better fate. Jane knew that her father would think almost any fate unworthy of Agnes. He had admired her since her first days at Miss Milgrim’s School. When pressed by his indignant daughters for further and more flattering comment, even Mr. Ward had admitted that Jimmy was very clever. He fitted delightfully in Jane’s most intimate circle. That was why she had asked him out for Thanksgiving luncheon with the family.

Thanksgiving luncheon had been like all Thanksgiving luncheons⁠—not very brilliant. There had been too much turkey and too many children to make for clever conversation around the groaning board. Mr. Ward had sat on Jane’s right hand and Jimmy on her left. On either side of Stephen sat Mrs. Ward and Isabel. Robin and Miss Parrot and the five children filled up the centre of the table. They had eaten for nearly two hours and then had sunk in recumbent attitudes around the chintz-hung living-room. Suddenly, early in the afternoon, Jack Bridges had sprung to his feet and asked Cicily, rather sheepishly, to go for a walk. She had deserted the younger children immediately and, whistling to the cocker-spaniel puppy, had started off with him across the terrace. Jane had watched Jack help her, with adolescent gallantry, to climb over the stile that led to the open meadows. She had smiled, a trifle wistfully, over Cicily’s budding coquetry. Cicily could have cleared that stile at a bound. While she was smiling, Jimmy had roused himself from lethargy. He too had been watching the children.

“ ‘The younger generation is knocking at the door,’ Jane,” he had smiled. “But they have the right idea. Come out and walk five miles with me before sunset.”

She had gone for her hat and coat without a moment’s hesitation. Everyone was staying on for supper. The children were playing jackstraws, and Stephen was talking politics with Mr. Ward and Robin, and her mother and Isabel were discussing Bert Lancaster’s paralysis, with an occasional digression on Flora’s hat shop. She was not needed in the living-room and she would love a long walk.

They went out the terrace door and down the garden path and out into the fields in the opposite direction from the one which the children had taken. The November day was very cold and clear. The oak trees were already bare. The winter fields were brown. A high northwest wind was blowing across the Skokie Valley. It was difficult to talk in the teeth of the gale, and they had covered nearly two miles over the uneven stubble before they said much of anything. Then they paused in the shelter of a haystack.

“We must go back,” said Jane, trying to tuck her windblown pompadour under her felt hat-brim.

“Must we?” said Jimmy. “This walk was just what I wanted.”

“I’m all out of breath,” said Jane. “That last cornfield was rough going for an old lady.” She drew in a great gasp of the bracing autumn air.

“Was it?” said Jimmy. “You don’t look much older than Cicily this minute. Your cheeks are red and your eyes are bright and your mussy hair is pretty. That’s the true test of age for a woman. She’s young as long as she looks beguiling with mussy hair!”

“I look like a wild Indian,” said Jane, still struggling with the pompadour. “You ought to look at Cicily when the wind gets romping with her head of excelsior.”

“That’s Jack Bridges’ privilege,” said Jimmy. “I’m no cradle-snatcher.”

Jane left the haystack and started to walk back across the cornfield. It was easier to talk, now, with the wind at their backs. Nevertheless, they did not say anything for several minutes. Jane was hoping that Jack would bring Cicily home before dark. Jimmy broke the silence.

“Whose privilege was it, Jane, to look at you when you were Cicily’s age?” he asked.

Jane started at the question. But she did not answer.

“I bet someone did,” said Jimmy. “Who was he, Jane?”

“Oh,” said Jane vaguely, “he⁠—he was⁠—just a boy.”

“A broth of a boy?” questioned Jimmy. “Did you get much of a kick out of it?”

“Yes, I did,” said Jane simply.

Jimmy looked very much amused at her candour.

“We all do at that age,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll never forget the girl who fell off the mourners’ bench.”

Jane felt very indignant at the tacit comparison.

“Oh!” she said quickly. “He wasn’t like that!”

“How do you know what she was like?” smiled Jimmy.

“I know she wasn’t like André,” said Jane. The name had slipped out unconsciously.

“Do you mean that André never taught you anything you couldn’t learn at a camp meeting?” queried Jimmy. “Oh, Jane!”

“I mean that André wasn’t like anyone⁠—anyone else I’ve ever met,” said Jane.

“My God!” said Jimmy, addressing the empty November sky. “She never got over him! I hope,” he continued severely, “that you confessed him to Stephen.”

“Oh, I confessed him to Stephen,” said Jane.

Again Jimmy looked very much amused at her candour.

“Good girl!” he said approvingly. “You must always confess them to Stephen.”

Jane thought that her mother would think that Jimmy was taking the marriage vows lightly. She almost thought so herself.

“There haven’t been any others,” she said severely.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” said Jimmy.

“Not really any others,” said Jane.

“While there’s life there’s hope,” said Jimmy.

“I don’t want any others,” said Jane indignantly.

“Oh, Jane!” said Jimmy.

“I don’t,” protested Jane. “I think clandestine love affairs would be horribly inconvenient.”

“There are higher things than convenience,” said Jimmy sublimely.

Jane ignored his comment.

“And I think,” she went on, “they’d be dreadfully smirching and soiling. And too terrible to look back on when they were over. They would be over, you know. You get over loving anyone⁠—”

“Oh!” said Jimmy. “You’ve discovered that, have you?”

“No, I haven’t!” said Jane quickly. “I⁠—I’ve just⁠—observed it.”

Jimmy chuckled quietly to himself. They walked nearly half a mile in silence. As they entered the garden, he resumed the conversation.

“You do get over loving anyone, Jane,” he said gently. “But you don’t always regret that love in retrospect.”

Jane thought that sounded very sweet and understanding.

“Perhaps not,” she said. By this time they had reached the apple tree.

Jimmy paused for a moment beside the clump of evergreens. Jane looked up at him with a smile. They had had a nice walk.

“Jane,” said Jimmy suddenly, “are you really as innocent as you seem?”

Jane’s eyes widened in astonishment. Jimmy’s eyes were very bright. His breath was coming quickly and a funny excited little smile twisted the corners of his mouth.

“You’re like a child, Jane,” said Jimmy. “An inexperienced child!”

Jane still stared at him.

“Jane,” said Jimmy suddenly, “I’m going to kiss you.” And he caught her suddenly in his arms and turned her face to his.

“Jimmy!” cried Jane in horror. “Jimmy!” His lips stopped her words. He kissed her long and ardently. Jane struggled in his arms. His cheek scratched her face. She pulled herself from his embrace and stood staring at him in the garden path.

“Oh, Jimmy!” she cried again. “How⁠—how could you?”

Suddenly she remembered the house at the end of the garden. She glanced quickly, fearfully, at the white clapboard façade. The clump of evergreens hid the living-room windows. But was that Miss Parrot’s white sleeve in the playroom bay above? Jane felt suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of humiliation. She had been kissed⁠—kissed like a pretty chambermaid in her own garden. She had glanced at her own front windows, fearful of a spying servant’s ironical eye.

“Jimmy,” she said, “I wouldn’t have believed it of you!” He was looking down at her, now, still breathing rather quickly. The excited little smile still twisted the corners of his mouth. He looked more like a faun than ever, thought Jane, with an unconscious shiver. “Will you please go back to Chicago, now, at once?” she said with dignity. “Will you please go back without coming into the house?”

Jimmy looked very much astonished.

“Why, Jane⁠—Jane⁠—” he faltered. “Do you really mind, so awfully?”

“I’m going in,” said Jane. “And I don’t want you to follow me.” She turned abruptly away from him and walked up the garden path to the terrace, trying to put her face in order. She opened the terrace door and entered the living-room. The family were all still lounging about the fire.

“Where’s Jimmy?” asked Isabel.

“He’s gone,” said Jane, turning her back on them to close the terrace door. “He wasn’t staying to supper. He had to get back to the News.” Lies, she thought contemptuously, lies, forced on her by Jimmy, forced on her by her own damnable lack of foresight! She ought to have known what was coming. She ought to have prevented it. She turned from the door and faced the family tranquilly.

“What’s up, Jane?” asked Robin. “You look like an avenging angel. Your cheeks are as red as fire.”

“It’s just the wind,” said Jane. More lies! “There’s a perfect tornado blowing.” She raised her hands to rearrange her pompadour. As she did so, she rubbed her fingers violently across her mouth. She could still feel Jimmy’s lips there. She could feel his kiss, still vibrating through her entire body. Suddenly she caught her father’s eye. Mr. Ward was sitting comfortably in Stephen’s armchair beside the smouldering fire. Behind a cloud of cigar smoke he was watching his younger daughter very intently. Jane managed to achieve a smile. No one else was paying any attention to her whatever. Jane sat down on the sofa beside Isabel and tried to listen to what she had to say about the cubistic designs that Flora was painting on the wall of the old coach-house. Isabel thought they were very comic. Mrs. Ward thought they were hardly respectable. Mr. Ward continued to watch them all from behind the cloud of cigar smoke. Jane tried to look as if she had forgotten that kiss.

IV

Mrs. Lester’s living-room was in festive array for a very gala occasion. The occasion was Mrs. Lester’s seventy-fifth birthday. When Jane entered the room with Stephen and the children, she could not see her hostess, at first, in the crowd of people who were laughing and talking around the hearth beneath the Murillo Madonna. Mr. and Mrs. Ward were there, and Flora and Mr. Furness, and Isabel and Robin, and Rosalie and Freddy Waters, of course. Edith and her husband had come on from Cleveland for the celebration and Muriel had invited Cyril Fortune. Bert Lancaster was not yet out of his bed. Rosalie’s daughter was in school in Paris and Edith’s son was in Oxford, but young Albert was there, home from Saint Paul’s for the Christmas vacation, so Isabel had brought Jack and Belle and Jane had brought Cicily and Jenny and little Steve. It was little Steve’s first dinner-party. The children were to eat at a separate table in a corner of the dining-room.

Mrs. Lester was sitting in her wheelchair on one corner of the hearthrug. Enormously fat and somewhat crippled with gout, she had not left her wheelchair for years. She still gave parties, however, great gay parties, and was pushed to the head of her dining-room table to preside over them with all her old-time gaiety. Her three dark-haired daughters and their attendant husbands had never ceased to flutter about her. They weren’t dark-haired any longer, of course. Edith was really white-headed, slim, worn, and distinguished at forty-three. Pretty Rosalie was growing grey, and even Muriel had one white Whistler lock, that she rather exploited, in the centre of her dark pompadour. Mrs. Lester herself, with her straight snow-white hair, her wrinkled, yellow face, and her great gaunt nose hooked over her ridiculous cascade of double chins, had come to look much more Jewish with advancing years. In spite of her invincible gaiety, her large dark eyes, with yellow whites, were shadowed with racial sadness. No eyes, thought Jane, were ever as beautiful as Jewish eyes. Mrs. Lester’s had always touched her profoundly. They were twinkling now, up at Mr. Ward, as she sat enthroned on the hearthrug. An enormous bowl of seventy-five American beauties nodded over her snowy head. Jane kissed her with real emotion. Then turned to Muriel.

“How is Bert tonight?” she asked.

“Oh⁠—Bert’s fine,” said Muriel easily. “He’s going to sit up next week. They’ve given him exercises for his arm. They think he’ll get some motion back.”

“I see,” said Isabel, at Muriel’s elbow, “you asked Cyril to fill his place.”

“Cyril’s always helpful,” grinned Muriel shamelessly. “He does what he can.”

“Who else is coming?” asked Isabel interestedly. “You’re still a man short.”

“Jimmy Trent,” said Muriel, smiling. “I asked him for our Jane.”

Jane glanced casually at her father, then turned, to smell an American beauty, rather elaborately. She had not expected this. She had not seen Jimmy since she had turned away from him, five weeks before, under the apple tree in the Lakewood garden. He had telephoned three times, but Jane had not gone to the telephone. He had not written, for which fact Jane was devoutly thankful. She felt somehow very unequal to answering that unwritten letter and still more unequal to the melodramatic gesture of sending it back unread. She had known, of course, that she would have to meet Jimmy sometime, but she had not anticipated that meeting at Mrs. Lester’s seventy-fifth birthday-party. She was wondering just how to handle it when Jimmy appeared at the living-room door.

Muriel moved quickly to meet him and Jane slipped quietly away from Mrs. Lester’s side before he came up to present his compliments. She began talking to Freddy Waters in a great burst of gaiety. In a moment the butler appeared at the dining-room door. He announced dinner and moved to push Mrs. Lester’s chair in to the table. Almost immediately Jane heard Jimmy’s voice at her elbow.

“I found your name in my envelope in the dressing-room, Jane,” he said, “and you can bet your life I was glad to see it there.” He offered his arm with a smile. His eyes, however, looked very serious. Freddy Waters had gone off in quest of Isabel. The dinner-party was passing into the dining-room, two by two.

Jane rested her fingertips on Jimmy’s black broadcloth sleeve. She felt there was nothing whatever to say to him. Jimmy looked anxiously down at her as they joined the little procession. Jane saw her father watching them as he offered his arm to Edith. Mr. Furness had gone in with Mrs. Lester.

“Can’t you forgive me, Jane?” asked Jimmy earnestly, as they entered the dining-room.

“I don’t know,” said Jane. “I still don’t understand at all how you could have done such a thing.”

“Don’t you, Jane?” said Jimmy wistfully. “Don’t you, really?”

“I don’t understand how you could have done it to me,” said Jane.

“I didn’t know,” said Jimmy, pulling out her chair for her as they reached the table⁠—“I didn’t know that you would take it quite so seriously.”

Jane seated herself in silence.

“I’ve taken it seriously myself,” said Jimmy, “since I did it.”

He sat down at her side.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said Jane severely.

“And you’ll forgive me?” said Jimmy.

“I don’t know,” said Jane again. She turned to look into his contrite eyes. There was something irresistibly funny about a penitent faun. Jane could not help smiling. Jimmy drew a long breath at the sight of her smile.

“You have forgiven me!” he said triumphantly.

Jane saw her father looking at him from across the table. She wished that Jimmy had not spoken quite so loudly. Then despised herself for the wish.

“Don’t let’s talk about it any longer,” she said evenly. “It happened, and I wish it hadn’t. But it doesn’t do any good to go on harping on it.”

“I don’t want to harp on it!” cried Jimmy jubilantly. “I don’t want to harp on anything you don’t want to hear.” He was looking at her now, with just the same old look of friendly admiration. “Let’s talk about the weather.”

They did, with mock solemnity. Then they talked of other things. Of Jimmy’s reviews, which were making quite a sensation in the Daily News; of Agnes’s play, which-was already half-written; of Cicily, shaking her dandelion head at Jack at the foot of the children’s table; of Mrs. Lester, nodding her white one at Mr. Furness at the head of theirs; of the charms of fourteen and of the charms of seventy-five. Jane was quite sorry when Mrs. Lester turned the conversation at the beginning of the salad course and she had to begin to talk to Edith’s husband of the charms of living in Cleveland⁠—if there were any, which Jane very much doubted.

Later, when the men joined the women in the living-room, Jane was rather surprised to find herself talking to her father. He sat down beside her on the green brocade sofa with a sigh of satisfaction.

“I don’t see enough of you, kid,” he said cheerfully. “Nor enough of Stephen. What with all the grandchildren, I hardly spoke to either of you on Christmas Day. I’m going to put in the evening catching up on what you’ve been doing.”

“I haven’t been doing much,” said Jane. “Just Christmas shopping.”

“Many town parties?” asked Mr. Ward.

“None in the holidays,” said Jane. “I’m too busy with the children.”

“Much company in the country?”

“No one but the children’s friends.”

“Jimmy been out often?”

Jane looked straight into her father’s eyes.

“He hasn’t been out since that luncheon on Thanksgiving Day,” she said.

Mr. Ward settled back against the sofa cushions.

“What do you hear from Agnes, kid?” he asked.

V

Motoring out to Lakewood when the party was over, tucked in beside Stephen in the front seat of their little Overland, with the children asleep in the tonneau behind them, Jane felt very happy over the events of the evening. She would not have believed it possible that she could have arrived so easily at an understanding with Jimmy. He was obviously very sorry and she had made her attitude quite clear. Jimmy knew now that she was not to be kissed like a chambermaid, caught in an upper corridor. Jimmy knew now that she was not entertained by philandering. Jimmy knew now that she was not that sort of wife to Stephen and that the idea of flirting with Agnes’s husband was, to her, unthinkable. Jimmy knew all those things, though they had not referred to his mistake again after they left the table. Jane had hardly spoken to Jimmy all the latter part of the evening. Jane had talked to her father and Jimmy had hung devotedly over Muriel. He had entered into open competition with Cyril Fortune for her favour and by the end of the party the blond young landscape-gardener was quite sunk in depression. Stephen had talked with his cousin Flora about her new hat shop. He had given her some splendid ideas about cost accounting. Flora had told Jane she was very grateful. Flora was not much of a bookkeeper.

How wise she had been, thought Jane, how very wise, not to have said anything to Stephen about that kiss. Not that wisdom had really entered into her decision to keep silent. In fact, all those weeks, when she had been wondering whether or no to talk to Stephen about it, she had felt that the wiser course would be to make a clean breast of the whole affair. And yet she hadn’t. Partly, of course, because of what Stephen would think of Jimmy, but even more because of what Stephen would think of her. Jane thought very little of herself, as she reviewed the incident. Jimmy had been outrageous⁠—Jimmy had been insulting. Yet Jane could not quite bring herself to tell the story to Stephen in the role of the betrayed damsel. Jane knew that she had been growing very fond of Jimmy. Jane knew that she had liked his flattering attention. And Jane knew that, though she had not expected his kiss and certainly had resented it, yet, after she had had it, she had not been able to get it out of her mind, out, indeed, of the very fibre of her being. That was the kind of thing a wife could not tell a husband⁠—not a husband like Stephen, at least, who had never even glanced at another woman since the day he had married her. Stephen would never understand how she could have thought about that kiss, the way she had. And if she did not tell him that, she really would not be telling him anything. Half-truths had no place in conjugal confidence. Half-truths were cowardly, misleading. Half-truths were really lies. Whereas silence was⁠—merely silence. No⁠—it was not the kiss half as much as the way she had felt about it.

What was a kiss, after all? Lots of women were kissed. Some of them had told her about it. Muriel was often kissed, and thought nothing of it. It was the thinking something of it that really counted. Jane had been awfully troubled.

But now, she felt, she had been very wise not to tell Stephen. The incident was over. It was forgiven and⁠—well, if not yet forgotten, it soon would be. Jane hoped she was not going to spend the rest of her life remembering that Stephen’s wife had been kissed by Agnes’s husband and had liked it. Yes, liked it, in retrospect. Jimmy had learned his lesson. It would not happen again.

Jimmy had not even asked when he might come out to see her. When he had said good night, he had left her to interpret the expression of his wistful eyes in silence. It was Stephen who had said in parting, “How about dinner on Friday, Jimmy? It’s fish night. You ought to taste Jane’s receipt for planked whitefish!” Even then he had not responded with a questioning glance at her. She had slipped her arm through Stephen’s and said serenely, “Of course, Jimmy. Just a family party.” And he had accepted without undue rejoicing. No grateful, penitent glances. Nothing to shame her before Stephen’s innocence.

Jimmy knew, now. There would be no more mistakes in the future. Jane snuggled down against Stephen’s shoulder under the furry lap-robe. He took his eyes from the road a moment to smile down into her face.

“Nice party, wasn’t it?” said Stephen.

“I had a lovely time,” said Jane, smiling softly. She kept on smiling all the way to Lakewood. A sleepy, reassured, little smile.