In Matthew’s opinion marriage was a failure. Mrs. Wyndwood sadly acquiesced. They sought the remedy.
“Marriage may be a failure, but not friendship,” Olive pronounced.
Now it was Matthew’s eyes that Eleanor’s sought, and his involuntarily met hers. There was exaltation in this secret glance, and mutual reassurance.
“Unless,” pursued Olive, “the friendship is contracted between persons of different sex.”
Mrs. Wyndwood’s eyes drooped; then opened full again to note how Matthew took the addendum. The friends perceived themselves reddening in simultaneous confession that Olive was not so very wrong; an indefinable expression, half abashment, half radiance, flickered over Eleanor’s features; her glance, swift, probing, challenging, dazzled him; his whole frame trembled at the thought that this heavenly creature could love him. Then he grew chill again, for she cried, as in the highest spirits:
“Oh, look at the sun! How comic!”
It had, indeed, become a clown’s face, swollen and bulbous and crossed with red bars.
The talk went on to Woman’s Rights, and Matthew mentioned that he had an indirect relation to the subject, because a girl he used to know in childhood had become Linda Verder’s secretary.
“Is she pretty?” Mrs. Wyndwood asked.
“I don’t know; I’ve never seen her.”