"That's too bad. I suppose it's the heat."
"No, it's more than that. Tom is pestering her. If she gives up, the whole thing will go under."
There was a silence.
"Do you think it very much matters after all? It's a pretty big price you want her to pay."
The words brought a picture of Herrick on the night he had kissed her and she had locked the door of their room. Jean moved as if to get up, but her own motion drove back the memory, cleared her brain and forced Herrick's hot eyes into the past.
"When personal need reaches the depths it has in Rachael," Gregory said slowly, "it becomes cosmic."
"That sounds like fatalism."
Gregory looked at her quietly. What had been her own need, when she had married Herrick? What had been his, when he had married Margaret?
"It's all so unreal when it's over, but——"
And then Mary was in the doorway laughing.