“Oh!—But if Edyth can be free, why can’t Neil? He never mentions anything religious. I don’t believe he gives it a thought!”
“Perhaps not. I don’t know anything about that. But if your surmise is true, it is only temporary. In his heart McCloud would feel that any marriage he contracted now was no marriage. Whatever his plunge into Clare’s circle has done to him, it won’t—in the last analysis—change his Catholic heart. At least, I don’t see how it can.”
“But Lewis! Surely—surely you aren’t so—why, I don’t understand! You wouldn’t have a man like that go unmarried! He’s just the sort to go to the devil—if he hasn’t ties. Of course he will marry again. If not Petra, some one else. He’s bound to.”
Lewis had good hold of himself now. He said, “No one is bound to be disloyal to the truest thing in him. Any more than he’s bound to be loyal to it. We’re creatures of free will. But if McCloud does use his free will toward the destruction of his new-found integrated self, I hope that it won’t be Petra who is the instrument. I’m very fond of Petra, as it happens,—deeply fond of her; and to see her ruin any man’s life—I simply can’t, that’s all. No matter what tragedy this means for them both, I hope they don’t go so far as a marriage pretense. Now I’ve told you my ideas on the subject, let’s forget it. It’s really their affair, not ours. But somehow I’m putting my faith on McCloud’s integration saving them both from inevitable misery. Petra’s doing awfully well at the office, by the way. Losing her would be no joke!” ... He ended on something which Cynthia, taking it at its face value, considered a laugh.
But though she let the sound pass as a laugh, Cynthia looked at her brother rather keenly. Had she been wrong? Was he still attracted by Petra himself? She shrugged it off. No, she was not wrong. Mere physical attraction wasn’t going to twist Lewis’ fine, important career out of shape, wasn’t going even to worry him for a minute. She was happily sure of it.
It was true, what Lewis had just said of Petra’s work. She had made herself invaluable in these long, hot, trying weeks, both to him and Miss Frazier. She could take dictation now, if given a trifle slowly, and when Lewis and Miss Frazier were both working under pressure, they sometimes even left letters unread for Petra to sign. And in the reception office people trusted her and liked her. They liked her even to the point, it seemed, of not minding being put off by her. This was a blessing in itself, since putting off people was one of the chief functions of her job. Just her voice over the telephone seemed to have the power to salve wounded feelings and instil resignation in importunate patients.
Lewis had taken her out to lunch several times during the summer, getting in his bid ahead of Neil or Dick. But those intimate hours afforded no reprieve from his loneliness for the real Petra. Those hours tête-à-tête over little tables turned Petra and Lewis into strangers. Although Lewis never accepted Clare’s eager invitations to parties and intimate teas at Green Doors, and met Clare only by accident at times when she came up to the office ostensibly to see Petra, Petra still considered him Clare’s friend, not hers. She clung almost passionately to that assumption. Lewis knew no way of breaking it down. Her stubbornness in this one matter was equalled only by her reticence. And since their midnight telephone conversation, she had never spontaneously brought Teresa into the conversation once. To his own tentative and diffident suggestions, she had always the same answer, “If she asks me, I will take you to see her some day. But not just now. She is—very busy.”
So paradoxically their casual contacts in the office were better, more satisfying, than any planned tête-à-têtes. When he stopped by her desk, going out to lunch or coming back, Petra might tell him of some comical incident that had come up during the morning in her gracious sphere, the reception room, and they would chortle over it in good fellowship. But sometimes she seized the opportunity to plead somebody’s case with him. To-day she had done that. Wouldn’t he please give Mrs. Jack Loring more attention? It was so special, so pitiful,—the thing she wanted his help with. Wouldn’t Lewis at least talk with Mrs. Loring about it? Lewis had not minded taking the time to explain to Petra—standing by her desk, looking down into her lifted, serious eyes,—that this particular committee worker was hysterical, and hopelessly sentimental, as well as outrageously interfering. Children were better off—he expounded it at some length, just to stay there near Petra—better off in degraded homes than in public institutions. But he would promise to do something in his own way, leaving the meddlesome social worker out of it, if he found that anything could be done without violating ordinary human rights to privacy.... It was at such moments as this that Petra was herself with Lewis and that something real was regained—and retained for as many precious minutes as it lasted—of their first intimacy on the edge of the June meadow.
But suddenly Petra had looked past him, in their whispered colloquy this afternoon, and smiled. McCloud had come in and was waiting until “the boss” should leave off and Petra be free for him to take for a noon spin in the glittering, swanky, sports roadster which, as a salesman, he had at his disposal. Looking from one to another of them in that minute, Lewis had been impressed more profoundly than ever with how alike they were. The eyes were the identical shade of blue. Such a terribly intense blue! They might be brother and sister. Or first cousins. But it was always startling,—as freshly and poignantly startling, every time he saw them together, as if he had never before noticed it. And they were both so vibrantly young! Tall, long-limbed, wide-shouldered, strong-chinned—and then again that intense blue of their eyes! They might be Siegmund and Sieglinde in love, and above the incest-taboos of mere mortals, belonging to each other by their very resemblance....
“Lewis, you look ghastly!” Cynthia broke into her brother’s swift lapse into revery, shattering it with her concern for him. He was grateful. It was not very easy, seeing Petra give to Neil what she had once seemed to give to himself—and then withdrawn—with such adamant mysteriousness.