“Alone, then. We have not been together in your place since Tom is back from his vacation.”
“Yes, he comes alone.” Cornelia spoke this slowly, pensively. Her next words trembled swift upon each other as if escaping her thought. “I have the idea that perhaps he likes to have his place apart—— It was that way with his old room. When he wanted me, he came to me. He knew I was not that way: that I was always glad to see him. I guess, don’t you think, he still needs his corner for being solitary?”
“But, Cornelia—why then, share a——”
“Oh, that is different, Davie. Women are in the way.”
“I don’t feel that you are. Cornelia.”
“He does. He is a strange dear, you know. He feels that—that women are in the way. He must.”
David’s inexorable logic was a burden to Cornelia who loved it—even as his candor hurt though she was nursing it. “Then you won’t come, next week?”
“Not until Tom asks me. Only the first time I will feel like that. The first time, it seems to me, the invitation had better come from him.”
She wanted to talk on. She had so much to ask and to confess. She had not been invited to help fix their rooms. This was a most hurting difference. She had concealed it. She felt that her words with David had been stupid. Better silence than her feeble approach to speaking. What she wanted David to see she had most hidden. All her moods toward him were of that sort. Always, always. If she wanted to give herself, there she was turning away. Of course Tom was not helpless in such a matter as arranging his apartment. He had his own ideas. She had been sure at least that she would be consulted. One afternoon she came: “How do you like things?” They were complete. “Splendidly, Tom.” That was all. It was not the artist who was offended. The artist in Cornelia could always be disposed of. But the woman—the sister. She realized that David also had been but perfunctorily consulted. This was still Tom’s place. Thinking of that Cornelia forgot her own slight.
She looked at the boy beside her, looked up at him. They sat on the ground. A pine tree rose straight above them. David studied the split roll in his hand, with its long red sausage sticking out at both ends.