All the old charm of the winter was gone now. The meals were disagreeable interludes of forced effort that grew more and more difficult to make. The only nights in the least approaching the pleasant dinners of the past, were the nights when Philip came. Then, for some reason that Jean did not seek to analyze, they all united to drag together the tattered shreds of the old gayety to cover this ugliness. Catherine did not help, but neither did she hinder. On these nights coffee was served on the tiny lawn under the full-leafed ailanthus. The lights in the rear tenement shone through the leaves like low-hung stars, the fountain was turned on to the full capacity of its trickle, and there was a definite feeling of relief in the air. But Philip did not come often. Not nearly so often as he had in the winter.
Jerome's three weeks lengthened to four, then five. Jean did not hear from him. The original date of Alice's wedding passed with a hurried note from Alice that her father's return had been delayed, she herself was going to the mountains, and the wedding would take place whenever he got back. Then she, too, dropped into the silence.
Gerte went to the Berkshires. Nan took a cottage with a co-worker at Rockaway; Beth went to Maine. Catherine and Jean were alone. Catherine made no explanation of why she was staying beyond her usual time in town and Jean did not ask her. There was little talk between them. Jean's efforts at meals rebounded from the wall of Catherine's mechanical replies like rubber balls.
At last in mid-June Jean reached the snapping point of her endurance. Either Catherine would have to force a pleasantness she did not feel, or else Jean would take her meals out. She could not eat another dinner sitting opposite Catherine's bitter, cynical eyes and tight lips.
It was a suffocating evening, threatening thunder, and the air, like hot wool soaked in glue, crushed Jean's last scrap of strength to keep up this senseless and annoying pretense. They had finished dinner, and Jean was standing by the French window opening to the garden, while Catherine still sat at the table.
"Suppose we eat out here after this." At least the sky would give a feeling of space and freedom, and the trickle of the fountain and noises from the tenements fill the strained silence. Jean passed into the tiny garden and took the steamer chair by the fountain. Catherine came as far as the window and stood looking at her curiously.
"Why? Do you object to the dining-room?"
"It seems empty for just two—as if the others had died."
Catherine shrugged. "Rather sentimental, mourning three able-bodied women gone on their summer vacations."
"You know very well it's not that." Jean looked at Catherine framed in the window. She was dressed in white and now, in the twilight of the unlit room, her thin face was strained and gray. Jean broke off and turned on the fountain. The little tinkle rested her when she was very tired.