“See here, Leilah,” Violet Silverstairs said aggrievedly, not once, but fifty times, “it is downright mean of you to keep me in the dark. What was it that he did? Tell me.”
The lady had known Verplank, as she had known Leilah, ever since she had known anybody. They had grown up together. Though not related by blood, they were by choice, which is sometimes thicker. In the circumstances it was perhaps but natural that she should call it mean, perhaps but human that she should be aggrieved.
The puzzle of the situation she put before her husband.
“What do you suppose it can be?” she asked.
But Silverstairs had no surmises to hazard.
“It must be something quite too dreadful,” Violet continued. “One of those things, don’t you know, that are said to change your whole life. She just sits about and reads queer books.”
“Queer books!” Silverstairs surprisedly repeated.
“Yes, books that tell of planes and rounds and cycles and chains of lives and rebirths and redeaths. She believes in them, too. She told me so.”
Silverstairs tugged at his moustache. “She might as well believe in the music of the spheres.”
Violet looked at her lord. She loved him as certain delicately organized women do love men who are merely robust. But her affection did not warp her judgment. She knew that within his splendid physique was a spirit, valiant perhaps, but obtuse.