"I'm sorry, but I'm really very busy. Winter is one long rush in this kind of work."
"I know. It must be; that's why I'm not going to try and force you to anything formal, just ourselves, and if you have a meeting afterwards you can run away. We shall understand."
Jean felt as if she were in the grip of some small, persistent animal that would never let go.
"Any night you say, Mrs. Herrick. But I'm just not going to let you off." Her pretty lips curved in childish pleading. And Margaret suddenly assumed a reality of her own. This was the woman whom Gregory Allen had loved and married, whose life was bound to his, whose babbling was always in his ears.
Jean almost laughed. She and Mary had paraded their bag of tricks, their broader viewpoint, their richer personalities. He had been interested, as he might have been interested in a play above the summer level of Broadway, and had gone back to his home, to the stifling life which evidently did not stifle him at all. Not all the big problems, the genuine human needs that she had struggled with for the last two months, had dulled the memory of that dinner when his need had called so sharply to her, when she had wanted to take his head in her arms and comfort him. And those moments in Rachael's room, when she had been caught up and almost swept away by the biggest force that had ever touched her life. And he? During these two months he had been quite contentedly listening to this senseless chatter. He must have been, since he had made no effort to escape it even for the brief visit that common decency demanded.
"How about to-morrow, then? Don't you think you might just squeeze us in?"
"If you will really understand and excuse me right after." She would go and free herself from this power. She would go and see Gregory Allen and this woman in the home they had made together. Pride and her own sense of humor would do the rest.
"Indeed we shall. How about seven o'clock? Or is that a little late? I can make it six-thirty if you'd rather?"
"Oh, no. Seven is quite all right."
Margaret wrote the address with a gold pencil she took from her handbag. For a moment Jean felt linked to Margaret by her inability to say that she already knew the number.