“There was no sense in making a fight if he wanted to quit. The law couldn’t widen the breach; it was there anyhow, from the first moment I knew what was in his mind.”
“He acted like a scoundrel,” persisted Eaton in his cool, even tones; “it was base, rotten, damnable!”
“If you mean”—she hesitated and frowned—“if you mean that he let the impression get abroad that I was at fault—that it was I who had become interested elsewhere—it’s only just to say that I never thought Billy did that. I don’t believe now that he did it.”
He was aware that he had ventured far toward the red lamps of danger. This matter of her personal honor was too delicate for veranda discussion; in fact, it was not a matter that he had any right to refer to even remotely at any time or place.
“Of course, unpleasant things were said,” she added. “I suppose they’re always bound to be. Manning was his friend, not mine.”
Eaton received this impassively, which was his way of receiving most things.
“By keeping out of the way, that gentleman proved that he couldn’t have been any friend of yours. If he’d been a gentleman or even a man—”
She broke in upon him quietly, bending toward him with tense eagerness.
“He offered to: I have never told that to any one, but I don’t want you to be unfair even to him. My mistake was that I meekly followed Billy when he began running with the new crowd. I knew I was boring him, and I thought if I took up with the Kinneys and the people they were training with, he might get tired of them after a while and we could go on as we had begun. But I hadn’t reckoned with Nan. I allowed myself to be put in competition with a girl of twenty—which is a foolish thing for a woman of thirty-five to do.”
She carried lightly the thirty-five years to which she confessed, but sometimes, in unguarded moments, a startled, pained look stole into her brown eyes, as though at the remembrance of a blow that might repeat itself. There was a patch of white in her hair just at one side of her forehead. Its effect was to contribute to her natural air of distinction. She was of medium height and her trim figure retained its girlish lines. Her face and hands were tanned brown, and the color was becoming. She wore to-day a blue skirt and a plain blouse, with a soft collar opened at the throat. She had walked to the clubhouse from her home, a mile distant, and her meeting with Eaton had been purely incidental. After her divorce she had established herself as a dairy farmer on twenty acres of land that she had inherited from her father, a banker in one of the smaller county seats, who had been specially interested in dairying and had encouraged her interest in the diversion he made profitable. To please him she had taken a course in dairying at the State Agricultural School and knew the business in all its practical aspects. Copeland had first seen her at a winter resort in Florida where she had gone with her father in his last illness, and their common ties with Indiana had made it easily possible for him to cultivate her better acquaintance later at home. Billy Copeland was an attractive young fellow with good prospects; his social experience was much ampler than hers, and the marriage seemed to her friends an advantageous one. When after ten years she found herself free, she rose from the ruins of her domestic happiness determined to live her life in the way that pleased her best. She shrank from adjusting herself to a new groove in town; the plight of the divorced woman was still, in this community, not wholly comfortable. There was little consolation in the sympathy of friends—though she had many; and even the general attitude, that Copeland’s conduct was utterly indefensible, did not help greatly. She realized perfectly that in following Copeland’s lead unprotestingly when he caught step with the quicker social pace set by the Kinneys,—a name that stood as a synonym for noiser functions and heavier libations than the community had tolerated,—she had estranged many who were affronted by the violence with which the town was becoming kinneyized.