It was now two years and more, since Olive and Brenton first had met. In the forced intimacy of a narrow social circle, they had been thrown together often; the churchly relation between Brenton and his senior warden had increased the frequency. As a rule, the meetings had been at the Keltridges'. The doctor liked Scott; Kathryn did not like Olive. However, though the invitations had been nearly always upon the one side, in any case, hostess or guest, there had been no way of eradicating Olive.
Olive and Brenton, then, had met almost constantly, during those last two years. They had discussed together quite impersonally all things under the sun and above the moon. Their personal talks had been few and very short. None the less, Scott Brenton was quite well aware that no one in the world knew his real self so well as Olive Keltridge. Aware of it, however, he was fully conscious that the fact caused him no regrets at all. Catie, as he still called her on occasion, should, of course, have been the one to comprehend him; but, like the cicada, he merely iterated "Catie didn't." And comprehension is the primal need of every man.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Olive found Kathryn Brenton in the extreme of disarray. The littered room was as unlovely as the careless costume, and Kathryn's personal grooming matched them both. It really was not her fault, she explained in fretful apology. She had not expected to see a soul, that morning; but the maid had given warning all at once, really apropos of nothing, and was up-stairs, packing. They were such selfish creatures. It was up and out, at a minute's notice, and you can take care of yourself as best you can. If she had behaved herself, and not gone off in a tantrum, she would have been there to open the door, and then Olive wouldn't have caught her in that old dressing gown she had put on just for breakfast.
All this was delivered volubly in the front hall, while Kathryn closed the door behind her guest and then drew down the blinds, by way of hospitable intimation to any later comers that she was not at home. That done, she led the way into the living-room, while Olive, at her heels, registered her impression of any woman who would be willing thus to present herself above the breakfast table to any man, least of all her husband. However, it was plain that, with Kathryn and her husband, the least of all had become the most, and that, too, at an epoch when, if ever, Kathryn needed to take the very greatest care to fix upon herself the seal of lifelong and admiring devotion. Of course, there might be such a thing as a devotion void of any admiration. Olive Keltridge, however, was not a woman to accept that sort of thing. Neither, she reflected swiftly, was Scott Brenton quite the sort of man to offer it.
Meanwhile, Kathryn, seated in a chair a good deal lower than the laws of perfect grace dictated, huddled her shabby dressing gown about her, ran a vaguely apologetic hand through her puggy pompadour, and went on with her domestic narration.
"It's so queer what sets them off, Miss Keltridge. One never knows when they will fly up in a temper; at least, the kind I seem to get. I never have the luck you do. Why, you have had the same second girl, ever since we moved here."
"The? Oh, Margaret? Yes, she has been with us about nine years." Olive smiled. "She seems almost like a member of the family, by now."
Kathryn shook her head in self-pity. The self-pity loosened a little tail of hair which arose, rampant, from the exact middle of her crown. However, Kathryn lacked a mirror within range, and so she talked on quite as contentedly, despite the waving, waggling tail.