"Yes. But—I think I can tell you this, without violation—Charles told me once, talking of you before I had met you, that to him you were the perfect woman, like his mother. Which meant—tender, loving, and devoted."
Catherine's spoon clicked against the soup plate. Her eyelids were suddenly heavy, weighted with memories. Charles had said that to her, years ago. A cold finger touched her heart, binding it, and she knew, through all the brimming delight of the past days, how she had hidden away the troubling thought of Charles.
"I don't mean that she spoiled him grossly," Bill was saying. "She was too New England, too much what we used to call a gentlewoman for that. Charles was simply the center of her life; his welfare, his desires, his future—those things set the radius of her circle. She had nothing else, you see. Except the idea"—the corners of Bill's mouth rose in his slow smile—"that since Charles was a man, he was a superior being. Did women really think that, Catherine? Or was that a concession they knew they could easily afford to make?"
"But Charles doesn't think men are superior." Catherine's smile was uncertain, begging for assurance. "Why, those early experiments of his, the brochures he published, were directed against that very superstition."
"Yes. Intellectually he has come a long way since those early days. But that matters so much less than we like to think."
Catherine waited while the waitress served the next course. Bill's words had evoked a thought clearly from the churning within her; she held it until the waitress had gone, and then spoke,
"You mean, exactly, that he wishes my radius to be his desires, his welfare, his future?"
"That's his old pattern. Bound to hang on, Catherine. Because it is so flattering, so pleasant. Isn't it what we all wish, anyway? Someone living within our limits?"
"Perhaps men wish it."
"You think women don't?"