Mrs. VanVorst had been very ill. A fever, contracted in South Africa where she had been with her husband—a fever gained in a futile effort to save the life of that husband, had sadly fagged a naturally vigorous constitution. There had been a recurrence soon after her return to America. Now she was in that condition of indolent convalescence that is in women so interesting, in men so uninteresting.
She was an out-of-door woman, tall, lithe, willowy. In the rugged health that was normally hers, she seemed muscled almost like one of the opposite sex; yet she lost by it none of the charm of frank femininity that was hers. She was long-limbed, clean-limbed, quick of mind and of body…. The forced inaction of illness was irksome to her. It was hard for her to walk slowly; it was hard for her to sit in silent inaction— to lie in indolent unrest. Too, she felt more than anyone save herself might ever know the loss of the man that had been to her not only husband but as well friend, companion and comrade.
She had been of the world, though anything but worldly. She knew perhaps, more than many another of the Hidden Things.
She strolled forward through the sun-flecked garden. A magazine, its leaves still uncut, was in her hand. She sank into a chair, in a spot from which she might see the Sound and its burden of sails.
"Tom come yet?" she asked.
Kathryn shook her head.
"Not yet."
"Heard from Jack to-day?"
Again Kathryn made negation.
"The foreign mail hasn't come yet," she said. "I told Pierre to stop at the office for it."