He laughed. "Perhaps I can talk her over."
Amy, lying on her couch, very weary, facing a shadowy future, felt his magnetism as he talked to her. It was as if life spoke through his lips. Murray had sat there beside her only an hour before. He had brought her roses but he had brought no hope.
Fear had for weeks kept Amy company. Through her nights and days it had stalked, a pale spectre. And now Maxwell was saying: "You'll be well in a month. Of course you'll come! There's room for half a dozen. You three won't half fill the house."
It was decided, however, that Ethel must stay in town. Amy had a nervous feeling that with the house closed Murray might slip away from them.
Old Molly Winchell, summing up the situation, said to Murray: "Of course Anne will marry Maxwell Sears. There's nothing like propinquity."
Murray, startled, admitted the danger. "It would be an awful thing for Anne."
"Why?"
"He's rather a bounder."
Old Molly Winchell hit him on the arm with her fan. Her eyes twinkled maliciously. "He's nothing of the sort, and you know it. You're jealous, Murray."
Murray's jealousy was, quite uniquely, not founded on any great depth of love for Anne. His appropriation of the three sisters had been a pretty and pleasant pastime. When he had finally decided upon Anne as the pivotal center of his universe he had contemplated a future in which the other sisters also figured—especially Amy. He had, indeed, not thought of a world without Amy.