"Yes, a man! But only for the trip."
They laughed a good deal about Margaret's vacation, called her the
"Windward Islands," and asked her to make reservations for them in her
Paradise when they had found desirable partners.
"Only, I should have to bring John, and he wouldn't know what to do with himself on a beach," Isabelle remarked. "I don't know any one else to take."
"You mustn't go Windwarding until you have to," Margaret explained….
At the dessert, the children came in,—two boys and a girl. The elder boy was eight, with his mother's fair hair, blue eyes, and fine features, and the same suggestion of race in the narrow high brow, the upward poise of the head. His younger brother was nondescript, with dark hair and full lips. Margaret observed her children with a curiously detached air, Isabelle thought. Was she looking for signs of Larry in that second son? Alas, she might see Larry always, with the cold apprehension of a woman too wise to deceive herself! The little girl, fresh from her nap, was round and undefined, and the mother took her into her arms, cuddling her close to her breast, as if nothing, not even the seed of Larry, could separate her from this one; as if she felt in her heart all the ills and sorrows, the woman's pains to be,—the eternal feminine defeat,—in this tiny ball of freshness. And the ironical smile subtly softened to a glow of affection. Here, at least, was an illusion!
Isabelle, watching these two, understood—all the lines, the smile, the light cynicism—the Windward Islands! She put her arms impulsively about the mother and the child, hugging them closely. Margaret looked up into her shining eyes and pressed her hand….
"There are some cigarettes in the other room," Margaret suggested; "we'll build up the fire and continue the argument in favor of the Windward Islands."
"It is a long way to New York over that road," Conny observed. "I have an engagement."
Now that she had satisfied her curiosity about "how the Poles lived," she began to think of her dinner with Cairy, and was fearful lest she might be delayed.
"Spend the night," suggested Margaret; but Isabelle, who understood Conny, telephoned at once for the motor.