"But, Alice, people BORE me so--I've had so much of it, and it's always the same thing!"
"I know; I hate it, too. But there are funny phases in marriage, Rachael, and one has to take them as they come. Warren might like it."
Rachael pondered. Elinor Pomeroy and the Villalongas, the Whittakers and Stokes and Parmalees again! Noise and hurry, and dancing and smoking and drinking again! She sighed.
"I believe I'll suggest it to Warren, Alice. Then if he's keen for it, we'll do it next year."
"I would." Mrs. Valentine rose, and looked toward the beach with an idea of locating Martha and Katrina before sending for them. "Isn't it almost lunch time?" she asked, adding in a matter-of-fact tone: "Don't worry any more, Rachael; it's largely a bad habit. Just look the whole thing in the face, and map it out like a campaign. 'The way to begin living the ideal life is to begin,' my father used to say!"
This talk, and others like it, had the effect of bracing Rachael to fresh endurance and of spurring her to fresh courage for the few days that its effect lasted. But sooner or later her bravery would die away, and an increasing discouragement possess her. Lying in her bare, airy bedroom at night, with sombre eyes staring at the arch of stars above the moving sea, an almost unbearable loneliness would fall upon soul and body; she needed Warren, she said to herself, often with bitter tears. Warren, splashing in his bath, scattering wet towels and discarded garments so royally about the place; Warren, in a discursive mood, regarding some operation as he stropped his razor; Warren's old, half-unthinking "you look sweet, dear," when, fresh and dainty, his wife was ready to go downstairs--for these and a thousand other memories of him she yearned with an aching desire that racked her like a bodily pain.
"Oh, it isn't right for him to torture me so!" she would whisper to herself. "It isn't right!"
October found them all back in the city, an apparently united and devoted family again. Rachael entered with great zest into the delayed matter of redecorating and refurnishing the old home on Washington Square, finding the dignified house--Warren's birthplace--more and more to her liking as modern enamel fixtures went into the bathrooms, simple modern hangings let sunshine and air in at the long-darkened windows, and rich tapestry papers and Oriental rugs subdued the effect of severe cream woodwork and colonial mantels.
She found Warren singularly unenthusiastic about it, almost ungracious when he answered her questions or decided for her any detail. But Rachael was firmly resolved to ignore his moods, and went blithely about her business, displaying an indifference--or an assumed indifference--that was evidently somewhat puzzling to Warren and to all her household. She equipped the boys in dark-blue coats and squirrel-skin caps for the winter, marvelling a little sadly that their father did not seem to see the charms so evident to all the world. A rosier, gayer, more sturdy pair of devoted little brothers never stamped through snowy parks, or came chattering in for chops and baked potatoes. Every woman in the neighborhood, every policeman, knew Jim and Derry Gregory; their morning walks were so many separate little adventures in popularity. But Warren, beyond paternal greetings at breakfast, and an occasional perfunctory query as to their health, made no attempt to enter into their lives. They were still too small to interest their father except as good and satisfactory babies.
One bitter December day the thunderbolt fell. Rachael felt that she had always known it, that she had been sitting in this hideous hotel dining-room for years watching Warren--and Margaret Clay.