"You really think it's not a preposterous scheme, then?"
"The only preposterousness would be in refusing it. It's ripping!"
"What is ripping?"
Catherine turned, a quick stir of pleasure at the low voice. Bill was at the door.
"Come in and hear about it." Henrietta waved toward a chair. "Tea?"
Bill shook his head and sat down near Catherine. He sagged in his chair, a suggestion of unkempt, wrinkled weariness in his face and clothes.
Henrietta explained in hard, glowing phrases, that Catherine had the opportunity of a lifetime. As Catherine listened and watched, she had a renewal of the strange feeling which had haunted her since Christmas morning. We are so lonely—so shut off—so absolutely isolated, she thought. Each of us speaks only his own language. We think we reach another human being, that he knows our tongue, and we discover that we have fooled ourselves. Grotesquely. Charles—remote, unreachable. I imagined that contact. Bill, and Henrietta—she is content, thinking she communicates with Bill.
"Are you going?" Bill glanced at her under his heavy lids.
"I think I am," she said. She wished she could find his thought which reached toward her.
"Perhaps I'll see you. I have to go to Chicago the end of the month on that Dexter contract," he added, to Henrietta.