"Yes,—very pleasant," he assented as he would have if it had been the
Falkners or the Lawtons or the Frasers.
In the same undiscriminating manner he agreed with her other remarks about the Woodyards. People were people to him, and life was life,—more or less the same thing everywhere; while Isabelle felt the fine shades.
"I think it would be delightful to know people worth while," she observed almost childishly, "people who do something."
"You mean writers and artists and that kind? I guess it isn't very difficult," Lane replied indulgently.
Isabelle sighed. Such a remark betrayed his remoteness from her idea; she would have it all to do for herself, when she started her life in New York.
"I think I shall make over the place at Grafton," she said after a time. Her husband looked at her with some surprise. She was standing at the window, gazing down into the cavernous city in the twilight. He could not possibly follow the erratic course of ideas through her brain, the tissue of impression and suggestion, that resulted in such a conclusion.
"Why? what do you want to do with it? I thought you didn't care for the country."
"One must have a background," she replied vaguely, and continued to stare at the city. This was the sum of her new experience, with all its elements. The man calmly smoking there did not realize that his life, their life, was to be affected profoundly by such trivial matters as a Sunday luncheon, a remark by Tom Cairy, the savage aspect of the great city seen through April mist, and the low vitality of a nervous organism. But everything plays its part with an impressionable character in which the equilibrium is not found and fixed. As the woman stared down into the twilight, she seemed to see afar off what she had longed for, held out her hands towards,—life.
Pictures, music, the play of interesting personalities, books, plays,—ideas,—that was the note of the higher civilization that Conny had caught. If Conny had absorbed all this so quickly, why could not she? Cornelia Woodyard—that somewhat ordinary schoolmate of her youth—was becoming for Isabelle a powerful source of suggestion, just as Isabelle had been for Bessie Falkner in the Torso days.