I am not sure how much Andrew Christian understood of the circumstances when, without giving him the facts or mentioning a name, I asked his advice. He only said:
“You’ve had some experience, Frank, of the potency of love, haven’t you? Well, love has a twin sister—truth. In love and truth together there’s a power which, if we have the patience to wait for its working out, will solve all difficulties and meet all needs.”
My experiences during the past few months having given me some reason to believe this, I decided, so far as I came actively to a decision, to let it rule my course; but in the end the critical moment came by what you would probably call an accident.
It was the last Sunday in June. My work in Atlantic City being over, Mrs. Grace had asked me to come down for the week-end to her little place in Long Island. It was not exactly a party, though there were two or three other people staying in the house. My chief reason for accepting the invitation—as I think it was the chief reason for its being given—was that the Barry family were in residence on the old Hornblower estate, which was the adjoining property.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Grace and her guests were all asked to Idlewild, as the late Mrs. Hornblower had named her house, to Sunday lunch.
The path from the one dwelling to the other was down the gentle slope of Mrs. Grace’s gardens, across a meadow, at the other side of which it joined the Idlewild avenue, and then up a steep hill to the rambling red-and-yellow house. Here one dominated the Sound for a great part of the hundred and twenty miles between Montauk Point and Brooklyn.
Sauntering idly through the hot summer noon, I found myself beside Mrs. Grace, while the rest of the party straggled on ahead. As my hostess was not more free than other women from the match-making instinct, it was natural that she should give to the conversation a turn that she knew would not be distasteful to me.
“She’s a wonderful girl,” she observed, “with just that danger to threaten her that comes from being over-fastidious.”
“I know what you mean by her being over-fastidious; but why is it a danger?”
“In the first place, because people misunderstand her. They’ve ascribed to light-mindedness what has only been the thing that literary people call the divine searching for perfection.”