"It is sad," said Minnie, solemnly; "but love is a great and terrible factor in life, and elective affinities are not to be judged by conventional rules."
For my own part, I thought Willie Williams a great deal nicer and more attractive than Walter Dana, except, to be sure, that Walter did talk and look like other people. Perhaps, I said, things were not quite so bad as Minnie made them out. It was to be hoped that poor Loulie would pause at the brink. A great many such stories, especially American ones, never come to anything, except that the heroine lives on, pining, with a blighted life; and I thought, if that were all, Willie was not the kind of man who would mind it much. Very likely he would never know it.
Blanche Livermore said the idea of a woman pining all her days was nonsense. All girls had affairs, but after they were married the cares of a family soon knocked them all out of their heads. To be sure, Blanche's five boys were enough to knock anything out; but Minnie told us all afterward, separately, in confidence, that it was a little jealousy on her part, because she had been once rather smitten with Walter Dana herself. This seemed very realistic; and I must say my own observations confirmed the truth of Minnie's story. Mrs. Williams did look at times conscious and disturbed. One night, too, Tom and I called on them to make arrangements about some concert tickets. Willie welcomed us in his usual cordial fashion, saying Loulou would be down directly; and in ten minutes or so down she came, in one of her loveliest evening dresses, white embroidered crape, with a string of large amber beads round her throat.
"I am afraid you are going out, Mrs. Williams; don't let us detain you."
"Not at all," she said, with her usual indifference. "We are not going anywhere. I was waiting upstairs to see the children tucked up in their beds."
It seemed like impropriety of behaviour in no slight degree to fag out one's best clothes at home in that aimless way, but when in ten minutes more Mr. Walter Dana walked in, her guilt was more plainly manifest, and I shuddered to think what a tragedy was weaving round us. Only a day or two after, I met her alone, near nightfall, hurrying toward her home, and with something so odd about her whole air and manner that I stopped short and asked, rather officiously perhaps, if Mr. Williams and the children were well.
"Oh, yes; very—very well, indeed!" she threw back, in a quick, defiant tone, very unlike her usual self; and then, as I looked at her, I perceived to my dismay, that she was crying bitterly. I felt so awkward that I did not know what to say, and I stood staring, while she pulled down her veil with a jerk, and hurried on. I could not help going into Minnie's to ask her what she thought it could mean. Minnie, of course, knew all about it.
"She has been in here, and I have been giving her a piece of my mind. I hope it will do her good. Crying, was she? I am very glad of it."
"But, Minnie! how could you? how did you dare to? how did you begin?" I asked in amazement, heightened by the disrespectful way in which Minnie had dealt with elective affinities.
"Oh, very easily. I began about her children, and said how very delicate they looked, and that we all thought they needed a great deal of care."