At this Kathryn tossed the book aside and it fell at Anna’s feet. She picked it up and handled it as if it were a tender baby that had bumped its nose.
“It must be perfectly wonderful,” she said, smoothing the book, “to have an autographed copy of a novel. It’s like having a lock of someone’s hair. Where is Brace, Kathryn?”
This was unfortunate.
“That is my business and his!” Kathryn spoke slowly. Her eyes slanted and her lips hardened.
“My darling, I beg your pardon!” And once more Anna Morris was shoved into the groove where she belonged.
Later that day, after the luncheon with Sandy––Anna had been eliminated by a master stroke that reduced her to tears and left Sandy a victim to Kathryn’s wiles––Kathryn called upon Helen Northrup.
She was told by the smiling little maid to go up into the Workshop. This room was a pitiful attempt to lure Brace to work at home; in his absence Helen sat there and scribbled. She wrote feeble little verses with a suggestion of the real thing in them. Sometimes they got published because the suggestion caught the attention of a sympathetic publisher, and these small recognitions kept alive a spark that was all but extinguished when Helen Northrup chose, as women of her time did, a profession or––the woman’s legitimate sphere!
There had been no regret in Helen’s soul for whatever part she played in her own life––her son was her recompense for any disappointment she might have met, and he was, she devoutly believed, her interpreter. She loved to think in her quiet hours that her longings and aspirations had found expression in her child; she had sought, always, to consider his interests wisely––unselfishly, of course––and leave him as free to live his own life as though she were not the lonely, disillusioned woman that she was.
She had never known how early Brace had understood the conditions in his home––mothers and fathers rarely do. Only once during his boyhood had Brace ventured upon the subject over which he spent many confused and silent hours.