But when she went back to the hotel she could not bring herself to order supper. The menu stared at her—with ducklings and roasts and table d’hotes. Figure as she would, she could not order a supper for less than a dollar. So she pleaded a headache to the waiter and left the table to go supperless to her room and then to bed, for the nurse had said Gregory must be quiet that evening.
CHAPTER XIX
MENTAL SURGERY
MARGARET knew all about it now. From her point of view certain conventions of non-interference between husband and wife were so many links in the old chain. Undoubtedly it was not that she wanted to force Helen’s confidence. But to come upon Helen the Monday after that exhausting Sunday, come to her to say good-by and make plans for the future, and to find the splendid dignity and poise of the Helen she had been with in Chicago destroyed angered her. Helen had told her the facts. She had to tell some one, she told herself in a justification she felt bound to make in secret, and Margaret was at least a stranger in the city and moreover the only woman she knew who would not make the slightest impulse to carry her story to other ears.
Margaret, in immaculate white linen, looking as cool and competent as an operating surgeon, had listened. She heard the whole of the story, how Gage had changed—for that Helen insisted upon.
“He’s simply not himself. I suppose it’s the feeling he has towards the girl.”
“Don’t ‘the girl’ her, Helen. I’m not a bit sure of that part of the story. Somehow it’s too preposterous that Freda should be languishing somewhere waiting for Gage’s casual attention. I tell you that girl doesn’t languish. She’s not that kind. She’s the most magnificently unconscious modern you ever saw. She wouldn’t be any one’s mistress. She hasn’t that much dependence in her. Not for a minute. I simply don’t believe it.”
“She disappeared the day after he came back from the convention. And then he was away that week-end she was seen at the Roadside Inn.”
“I don’t believe she was ever seen there,” said Margaret.
Helen put her hand to her head.
“I don’t want to believe it, but if he won’t deny it—and isn’t it possible that the poor child’s run away even from him? If she should be going to have—oh, damn, I can’t say it even—” She broke off a little hysterically.