"But you're not taking Nan! I came home early especially to see her. I did not even go back to the office for fear of being detained." But, of course, his lonely protest accomplished nothing, and as he opened the front door for the three departing women, he asked, "When am I to see you, Nan?"
Nan looked up at him very sweetly and said "Never." She said it lightly, but she knew it was the bitter truth. She knew Letitia. Letitia would never permit a second meeting.
Just as she got into the car she heard him call, "Oh, isn't this your bag?" and she heard Letty answer:
"No, it's mine. It represents one of Nan's abandoned ideas."
THE RETURN TO NORMALCY
Strange, unnatural conventions were growing up about divorce, Cora reflected. The world expected you to appear as completely indifferent to a man when once your decree was granted as it had assumed you to be uniquely devoted to him as long as the marriage tie held. Here she was, sitting at her ease in her little apartment; she had bitten her toast, poured out her coffee, opened her mail—a dinner invitation, a letter from her architect about the plans for her new house, a bill for her brocade slippers, an announcement of a picture exhibition, and— As she moved the last envelope from its position on the morning newspaper her eye fell for the first time on the account of Valentine Bing's illness.
"It was said at the Unitarian Hospital, where Mr. Bing was taken late last night, that his condition was serious."
A sketch—almost obituary—of him followed: "Valentine Bing was born in 1880 at St. Albans, a small town on Lake Erie. He began life as a printer. At twenty-one he became editor of the St. Albans Courier. In 1907 he came to New York." She glanced along rapidly. "Great consolidation of newspaper syndicate features—large fortune—three times married—the last time to Miss Cora Enderby, of the prominent New York family, from whom he was divorced in Paris in October of this year." Nothing was said about the two other wives; that seemed natural enough to Cora. But it did not seem natural that this man, who for two years had made or marred every instant of her life, was ill—dying, perhaps; and that she like any other stranger should read of it casually in her morning paper.