"Will you tell me why it has 'State Asylum' on the horse block?" she said.
"That's just what it is," said Lydia—"an asylum, a real asylum to some of us. It used to be for the insane, Benny. That's why."
On the all-day journey to New York Miss Bennett had counted on hearing the full psychological story of the last two years. In her visits to the prison she had found that Lydia wanted to hear of the outside world—not to talk of herself; but now that she was free Miss Bennett hoped this might be changed. She had taken a compartment so they could be by themselves, but the minute the door was shut upon them a funny change came over Lydia. She grew absent and tense, and at last she sprang up and opened it.
"It's pleasanter open," she said haughtily, and then she suddenly laughed. "Oh, Benny, to be able to open a closed door!"
Miss Bennett began to cry softly. All these months she had been trying to persuade herself that the change in Lydia was due to prison clothes; but now, seeing her dressed as she used to dress, the change was still there. She was thinner, finer—shaped, as it were, by a sharper mold. All her reactions were slower. It took her longer to answer, longer to smile. This gave her—what Lydia had never had before—a touch of mystery, as if her real life were going on somewhere else, below the surface, remote from companionship.
She wiped her eyes, thinking that she must not let Lydia guess she thought her changed. Their eyes met. Lydia was discovering a curious fact, which she in her turn thought it better to conceal. It was this: That the figures of her prison life had a depth and reality that made all the rest of the world seem like shadows. Even while she questioned Miss Bennett about her friends she felt as if she were asking about characters in a book which she had not had time to finish. Would Bobby be sure to be at the station? Was Eleanor coming to town that night to see her? Where was Albee?
Miss Bennett did not know where Albee was, and her tone indicated that she did not greatly care. She did not intend to stir Lydia up against anyone but she could not help wishing Lydia would punish Albee. He had not been really loyal, and he was the only one of the intimate circle who had not been. A man with red blood in his veins, Miss Bennett thought, would have married Lydia the day before she went to prison or would at least be waiting, hat in hand, the day she came out.
Bobby, gay and affectionate as ever, met them at the station and drove with them to the town house. Morson opened the front door and ran down the steps with a blank face and a brisk manner, as if she had been returning from a week-end; but as she stepped out of the motor he attempted a sentence.
"Glad to see you back, miss," he said, and then his self-control gave way. He turned aside with one hand over his eyes and the other feeling wildly in his tail pocket for a handkerchief.
Lydia began to cry too. She put her hand on Morson's shoulder and said, "I'm so glad to see you, Morson. You're almost the oldest friend I have in the world," and she added, without shame, to Miss Bennett, "Isn't it awful the way I cry at anything nowadays?"