A minute later her eyes met her husband’s in the mirror of her dressing table. Her own were worried and Harry was curious about it. She answered his silent question.
“Harry! I don’t like it. I don’t like it a bit. I’m—deeply troubled.”
“My dear! You blessed idiot! I thought it was merely your idea of being funny. What has happened to your sense of humor? If Nellie doesn’t like it, she can lump it. What’s it to us! She isn’t such a hot cook, anyway. Besides—”
But Cynthia was laughing. “Blessed idiot yourself!” she crowed, but went on quickly serious again. “It isn’t Nellie; it’s Lewis I mind! See here! This is Thursday, isn’t it? Lewis was here over the week-end and now he’s back again. Twice in one week. Why, do you suppose?”
But Harry had no idea. Certainly it was unprecedented. And Cynthia went on. “Well, I’ll tell you. Lewis has come to see his new stenographer. Being with her all day in town—having Petra right there in his office from nine to four every single day in the week—isn’t enough. He has to come shooting twenty miles out to Green Doors to spend the evening with her. He’s a lost soul, I tell you.”
“But this isn’t Green Doors! This is my house. He has come to see me and the kids—perhaps even you. If he wanted to be with Petra Farwell, he could take her out to dinner in town or to the Country Club. Just the two of ’em. No need to go all around Robin Hood’s barn to get at her. But even if Petra lived here and he had come to see her—what of it? What’s the matter with Petra? Why shouldn’t Lewis be left to choose his own girl? Why need you fasten such an expression onto a perfectly good face over it?”
Cynthia looked deeply into her mirror, curious to see what the expression was. She answered amiably, “Lewis must choose for himself, of course. But I have a right to my concern, haven’t I? He isn’t seriously in love with Petra. He couldn’t be. It’s merely her youth and beauty.... I’m sure of it.... Mere physical attraction!”
Harry got up and started for the door. He had business with the cocktails and also he must welcome his brother-in-law. But he turned back, for a minute. “Mere youth and beauty? Mere physical attraction? You might as well say ‘mere dynamite’ and have done with it,” he said seriously. “You and your meres! You’re an idiot.... We are happily married. Ten years happy. Who are you to be babbling like some old maid of ‘mere physical attraction.’ Mere lightning—and you know it! Look here! If they are really that way about each other—well, let’s hope they’ll be happy.”
“Harry, you can’t make me mad. I know you’re an idealist.”
“Am I? Perhaps. But I’m not a sentimentalist.”