“I don’t see how you can say that, Harlan,” interrupted Dorothy, coolly critical; “I particularly noticed her hands and they’re not nice at all. They’re red and rough and nearly the size of a policeman’s.”
“Whose hands?” demanded Harlan, in genuine astonishment.
“Why, Elaine’s—Miss St. Clair’s. If you’re going to do a book about her, you might at least try to make it truthful.”
Mrs. Carr went out, closing the door carefully, but firmly. Then, for the first time, the whole wretched situation dawned upon the young and aspiring author.
VII
An Uninvited Guest
Dorothy sat alone in her room, facing the first heartache of her married life. She repeatedly told herself that she was not jealous; that the primitive, unlovely emotion was far beneath such as she. But if Harlan had only told her, instead of leaving her to find out in this miserable way! It had never entered her head that the clear-eyed, clean-minded boy whom she had married, could have anything even remotely resembling a past, and here it was in her own house! Moreover, it had inspired a book, and she herself had been unable to get him to work at all.
Just why women should be concerned in regard to old loves has never been wholly clear. One might as well fancy a clean slate, freshly and elaborately dedicated to noble composition, being bothered by the addition and subtraction which was once done upon its surface.