Part + 

IV + 

Cicily, Jenny, and Steve + 

I + 

I + 

“Karo,” said Isabel, “is just as good as sugar. In case you can’t tell the difference.” + 

The morning sunshine was slanting in the wide dusty windows of the Chicago skyscraper. The big bare room was hung with Red Cross posters and filled with long deal tables and crowded with smartly dressed women. They sat, uncomfortably, on caterer’s folding chairs around the tables, meticulously pressing small squares of cheesecloth into intricately mitred rectangles. Isabel was working the bandage roller at the head of the first table. Muriel, at her elbow, looked up from her gauze sponges. + 

“But is it fattening?” she asked. + 

“Everything good is fattening,” said Isabel with a little sigh of resignation. + 

Jane smiled as she heard her. She knew that Isabel, at forty-six, did not really care much any longer if everything good was. But Muriel, at forty-one, still cared a great deal. She was constantly repressing a slightly Semitic tendency toward rounded curves. She was still awfully pretty, Jane thought. Her blue eye had never lost that trick of dancing. They were dancing now, as she responded lightly: + 

“The women of this country have done a great deal for Herbert Hoover. I think the least he can do for them is to offer a few reducing food substitutes.” + 

Isabel did not join in the laugh that went round the table. Jane knew that Isabel seriously deplored Muriel’s tendency to be frivolous about the war. Jack had been nine months in training now at Camp Brant in Rockford. Albert was there, too, of course. The boys had left Harvard together as soon as war was declared and had joined the first R.O.T.C. at Fort Sheridan. They would undoubtedly be shipped to France before the summer was over. + 

Isabel and Robin took the war very seriously. They were terribly worried about Jack. As far as they were concerned, it was just Jack’s war. Though he was still safely detailed to shoot machine guns over an Illinois prairie, Jane knew that Isabel was always thinking of him lying dead or wounded on a French battlefield. Every bandage she was rolling that morning in the big bare room on top of the Chicago skyscraper was turned out with a sense of personal service for her son. + 

Muriel was worried about Albert, too, of course. But she took a vicarious pride in his military exploits. She loved to have him gracing her Chicago drawing-room on his brief leaves from Camp Brant, looking decorative and dedicated and dapper in his second Lieutenant’s uniform. Albert Lancaster was a very beautiful young man and he was very fond of his mother. In the presence of Muriel’s other beautiful young men he always flirted with her, very flatteringly. Jane had sometimes felt that Muriel was just a little in love with him. She had said as much one day to Isabel at their mother’s luncheon-table. + 

“Now, Jane,” Isabel had responded airily, “don’t suggest that Muriel is going to add incest to her list of crimes!” + 

Mrs. Ward had said they should not talk like that. With Bert in the helpless condition he was, it was very natural for Muriel to centre her affections on her only son. + 

“If she only did!” had been Isabel’s telling comment. + 

Muriel had been very capable about the war, however, in spite of her frivolity. She had organized the Red Cross circle on top of the Chicago skyscraper. She had ordered the supplies and enrolled the workers and persuaded the owner of the skyscraper to give them the room rent free. She was a member of the countless Food Administration and National Council of Defence committees. + 

Nevertheless, Isabel deplored her frivolity. Muriel did not care. She just went on being frivolous. At the moment she was making airy little jokes about the sunny side of being a famine victim. + 

Jane soon ceased to listen. From her seat near the window she could look out over the roofs of the smaller office buildings toward the east, past the slender silhouette of the Montgomery Ward Tower, across the desert wastes of Grant Park, to the Illinois Central switchyards, where the miniature engines, dwarfed by distance, pulled their toy trains and belched their black smoke and puffed their white steam up into the serene face of the May sky. Beyond them stretched the sparkling blue plane that was the lake. + 

A lovely day, reflected Jane, idly. A lovely day, with a bright spring sun and a stiff east breeze to sweep the city clean. Her hands still busy mechanically folding her gauze sponges, she gazed up, blinking a little, at the golden orb that shone dazzlingly down on the city roofs above the gilded Diana that topped the Tower. What had that sun seen, she was thinking, since it had last sunk behind the murk of the stockyards, since she herself, staring from that same window, had watched its dying rays paint the Montgomery Ward Diana with rosy fire? The words of the Stevenson nursery rhyme she had so often repeated to the children, when they were little, came into her mind. + 

“The sun is not abed when I + 

At night upon my pillow lie, + 

But round the earth his way he takes + 

And morning after morning makes.” + 

One morning here on the Chicago lake front. A few hours earlier a very different one on the battlefields of France. The battlefields that would so soon swallow up Isabel’s Jack and Muriel’s Albert. But the battlefields that still, in May, 1918, almost four years after Jimmy’s death, achieved for Jane their major significance as Jimmy’s last resting-place. + 

Curious that Jimmy’s death had never made her realize the war. It had remained for her the supremely irrelevant accident that had killed him. An act of God, like a casual stroke of lightning. Or perhaps an act of man, like the blow of a death-dealing taxi, turning too quickly on a policeman’s whistle, to crush an absentminded pedestrian under its indifferent wheels. + 

Jimmy had not died for Germany, in spite of his Prussian helmet. He had not died for her, in spite of his love. He had died⁠—for fun, perhaps, as he had lived. Died true to his creed embraced in night school, in a supreme desire “to be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy.” Jimmy had died for Pater, as much as for anything! Strange end for a hedonist. + 

You grew accustomed to pain, thought Jane. You really did. Even to pain like hers over Jimmy, that was so sharp, so constant, so distinctly localized that she almost felt that it had an organic focus in her heart. You grew wise and philosophical about it. You generalized. You struggled for resignation. + 

In her struggles for resignation, Jane knew that she was sometimes guilty of the great injustice to Jimmy of wondering if it weren’t all better so. Better so, she tried to think she meant, because of Agnes and little Agnes, who were living on the proceeds of Agnes’s third play so much more comfortably with Jimmy’s memory than they could ever have lived in his restless, unhappy presence. Jane tried to think she meant that, but really she knew she was thinking only of herself and of the intolerable problems a future, with or without a living Jimmy, had propounded. + 

For death had given her Jimmy. He had died loving her. He had died with that love unsullied and unspoiled. Would he have lived to love her always? Few men were capable of that. Would she have lived to see him grow indifferent, remote, concerned, perhaps, oh, vitally concerned! with some other woman? Now he was hers forever. The future held no fears. Time, changing relationships, distance, estrangement⁠—all these were powerless. She could dismiss that fearful question as to whether she had ever really, in her secret heart, wanted Jimmy to go back to Agnes. She could dismiss her vague forebodings on the world of women that waited for him if he didn’t. She could dismiss the thought of Stephen. You could love the dead without disloyalty to the living. + 

Nevertheless, it was an act of treachery to Jimmy’s memory to allow herself to think, even for a moment, that he was better dead. Jimmy⁠—dead. The thought was still incredible. She had never lost the illusion of his laughing, living presence. He was the constant companion of her reveries. He would be laughing now, if he could read her thoughts. Laughing at her involuntary sense of guilt. “Invincible innocent!” would be his ironical comment. You could not shock Jimmy. And he always mocked you when you shocked yourself. Jimmy would be the first to advance the consoling theory that he had made everything much easier for everyone by passing, so opportunely, out of the picture. He would have prided himself on the felicitous gesture. He would have admired his romantic role. + 

Yet Jimmy had not wanted to die. He had said as much, very definitely, in that last letter he had written her. Not that he hoped much from the future. But he had no fear of it. Jimmy accepted life on its face value. He lived for the moment. + 

Sudden death. At thirty-five. Before you knew the answer to any of life’s riddles. Perhaps you never knew that, though. Perhaps there was no answer. Perhaps all lives, at any age, ended like Jimmy’s on an unresolved chord. What difference did it make, anyway, once you were safely dead? It did not make any difference, if you had played the game and had done what you had to do and had never really regretted it. + 

But there was the pain at your heart that made you keep on thinking. Thinking, in spite of Stephen, whom you loved, and the children, whom you adored, and all the little practical things you had to do every day, like folding sponges for the Red Cross. + 

Why couldn’t she feel the war more keenly? With the maps still hung on the living-room wall and Stephen immersed in Liberty Loan campaigns, and Jack and Albert always about the house on their leaves from Camp Brant, and Cicily and Jenny and Isabel’s little Belle out every day in Red Cross uniforms, feeding hot dogs and coffee to the entrained doughboys at the canteens in the city switchyards? + 

They felt the war keenly enough⁠—Cicily and Jenny and little Belle. They were all eager to go to France with the boys from Camp Brant. Cicily wanted to drive an ambulance. Underage, thank Heaven! She and Stephen would not have to face that problem. Uncle Sam, a less yielding relation than two indulgent parents, could be relied upon to keep the girls at home. Yes, ignoble but consoling thought, with little Steve still only fourteen the war could not touch her immediate family. + 

Isabel was talking of Crisco, now. She was saying it could never take the place of butter. + 

Jane rose from her seat abruptly. She had promised to meet Cicily at Marshall Field’s at noon. They were going to look for a new evening gown. Jack and Albert were coming down for the next weekend. Cicily and Belle were planning a party. + 

II + 

“But you’re children,” said Stephen. + 

“Oh, Dad,” said Cicily, with a tolerant smile, “be your age!” + 

Jane looked from Stephen to her twinkling daughter. Stephen was sitting in his armchair in the Lakewood living-room. The Evening Post, which had fallen from his hands a moment before at Cicily’s astounding announcement, lay on the floor at his feet. He was gazing at Cicily with an expression of mingled incredulity and consternation. + 

Cicily, her hand thrust casually through Jack Bridges’s arm, was standing on the hearthrug. She looked very cool and a little amused and not at all disheartened. She looked, indeed, just as she always did, like a yellow dandelion, with her tempestuous bobbed head of golden excelsior. The severity of her khaki uniform with its Red Cross insignia enhanced her flower-like charm. It was the common clay from which the flower had sprung. She looked as fresh as a dandelion, and as indifferent and as irresponsible. Jack Bridges was in khaki, too, with the crossed rifles of the infantryman on his collar and the gold bar of the second Lieutenant on his shoulders. He had come down yesterday for that weekend’s leave from Camp Brant at Rockford. He had just learned that he was sailing for France in six weeks, with the Eighty-Sixth Division. + 

Jack did not look at all disheartened, either, but not quite as cool as Cicily, nor nearly as indifferent nor as much amused. He looked just like Robin, Jane thought, with his pleasant snub-nosed smile and his friendly pale blue eyes. He was glancing at Stephen a trifle apologetically, but with no lack of self-confidence. + 

“How could I not have seen this was coming?” thought Jane. + 

“We’re not children, Dad,” continued Cicily with a pleasant smile. “I was nineteen in February and Jack will be twenty-two in July. We’re both well out of the perambulator!” + 

“I know just how you feel, sir,” said Jack sympathetically, “and I dare say, in a way, you’re right. If it weren’t for the war, I don’t suppose we would be getting married. If it weren’t for the war I’d be going to Tech all next winter and Cicily would be buzzing about the tea-fights at home. Still, she’d soon be marrying someone else, you know. I’d never have had the nerve to ask a girl like Cicily to wait for me. If it weren’t for the war, I’d be just an also-ran!” + 

“Wasn’t fought in vain, was it, Jacky?” said Cicily, pinching his elbow. + 

He kissed her pink cheek, very coolly, under her parents’ startled eyes. + 

“I wouldn’t expect to keep Cicily waiting at the church very long, even in wartime,” said Jack⁠—Jane caught the note of humility behind his levity⁠—“so we thought⁠—” + 

“Jack!” said Cicily. “Don’t put it like that! We don’t think⁠—we know! We’re going to get married, Dad, on the last day of June and have a two weeks’ honeymoon before he sails for France.” + 

“Cicily,” said Jane, “you’re much too young. You haven’t had any experience. You can’t know your own mind. The war has been fearfully upsetting, I know, for your generation. But you’re still a child. Oh⁠—I know you’ve been home a year from Rosemary! But what sort of a year has it been? Just war work⁠—and Jack. Not even a proper début. He was here every evening last summer when he was at Fort Sheridan in the R.O.T.C. And since he went to Rockford you’ve been getting letters and motoring up to see him and planning to get him down here on leave! You’ve never looked at another man⁠—” Why hadn’t she seen this was coming? It was all so terribly clear in retrospect. + 

“You can’t get married,” said Stephen firmly, “before Jack goes to France.” + 

“You married Mumsy,” said Cicily sweetly, “before you went to Cuba.” + 

“That was very different,” said Jane. + 

“Why was it different?” said Cicily. + 

“Because your father was twenty-nine years old,” said Jane decidedly, “and I was twenty-one and I’d been home from college for two years and I’d known lots of men and⁠—” + 

“Well, I bet if you’d wanted to marry the first man you looked at you’d have done it!” said Cicily. + 

A sudden flood of memories swept over Jane. Her father’s library on Pine Street. Her mother, shrill and effective. Her father, kind and competent. Herself and André, two shaken, irresolute children, standing mute before them, a world of young emotion lying shattered at their feet. But this generation was different. No trace even of anxiety in Cicily’s amused smile. + 

“Anyway, I’m going to. We’re not asking you, Mumsy, we’re telling you! It’s all settled. Belle’s talking to Aunt Isabel this minute⁠—” + 

“Belle?” questioned Jane. + 

“Belle and Albert,” said Cicily. “Albert Lancaster. He’s told his mother. We’re going to have a double wedding, here in the garden, the last day of June.” + 

“A double wedding!” cried Jane and Stephen at once. + 

“Yes,” said Cicily calmly. “Do you think the roses will be out? We’ve planned for everything. Why, Jenny’s known about it for two weeks. She’s going to be bridesmaid for both of us. Just Jenny⁠—but lots of ushers, with crossed swords, you know. Belle and I are going to cut the cakes with Albert’s and Jack’s sabres.” + 

“Cicily,” said Jane, “this is perfectly preposterous! Aunt Isabel will never listen to you! Why, Belle’s only eighteen! Albert’s not yet twenty.” + 

“He will be in August,” said Cicily. “I don’t see why you carry on about it like this. I don’t see why you don’t think it’s all very sweet and touching. Belle’s been my best friend all my life and now I’m marrying her brother and she’s marrying the son of one of your best friends and⁠—” + 

“In the first place,” said Stephen, “you’re all first cousins.” + 

“Albert isn’t anybody’s first cousin,” said Cicily pertly. “So that lets Belle out. And as for Jack and me⁠—that’s all right. We looked it all up in Havelock Ellis. There’s no danger in consanguinity if there isn’t an hereditary taint in the family. We’ve been awfully eugenic, Mumsy! We’ve simply scoured the connection for an hereditary taint! And we haven’t found a thing but Uncle Robin’s shortsightedness. Of course I’d hate to have a shortsighted baby⁠—but maybe I wouldn’t as it’s not in the common line. Anyway, there’s no insanity, nor epilepsy, nor cancer, nor T.B., nor venereal disease⁠—” + 

“Cicily,” said Stephen a little hastily, “you don’t know what you’re talking about⁠—” + 

Cicily dropped Jack’s arm and sank down on the arm of her father’s chair. She kissed the bald spot on top of his head very tenderly. + 

“Dad, dear,” she said very sweetly, “perhaps we don’t. Perhaps you didn’t know just what you were talking about when you wanted to marry Mumsy. But still you did it. You did it and you went to war and it all came out all right. Can’t you remember how you felt when you wanted to marry Mumsy?” + 

Across the dandelion head Stephen’s eyes met Jane’s. + 

“What are we going to do with them, Jane?” he said, with a smile that was half a sigh. + 

“Nothing,” said Jane very practically, “at the moment. We’ll talk it over with Isabel and Robin. And Muriel, of course. I don’t suppose Bert understands much, any more, of what goes on around him, but Muriel’s always decided⁠—” + 

Cicily jumped to her feet and threw her arms around Jane’s neck. + 

“That’s a good Mumsy!” she cried. Then, turning to Jack, “Come out in the garden, old thing! The apple tree’s still in bloom!” She seized his hand and turned toward the terrace doors. + 

“Cicily,” said Jane doubtfully, “nothing is settled. I don’t quite like⁠—” + 

Cicily burst into indulgent laughter. + 

“What do you think I am, Mumsy?” she inquired cheerfully “Sweet nineteen and never been kissed? Oh, you are precious⁠—both of you!” She tossed a kiss to her parents on the hearthrug and dragged Jack from the room. Jane watched their slim, young, khaki-clad figures romp down the lawn and disappear behind the clump of evergreens. + 

“Stephen,” said Jane, “it’s a very different generation. But what are we going to do?” + 

“I’m going to remember,” said Stephen, rising from his chair, “how I felt when I wanted to marry Mumsy!” He took her hand in his. Dear old Stephen! His eyes were just a little moist behind his bone-rimmed spectacles. Jane kissed him very tenderly. + 

“Just the same,” said Jane, “I wasn’t a bit like Cicily.” + 

“You were just as sweet,” said Stephen, “and nearly as young.” + 

“But I was different,” said Jane. “I know I was different.” + 

She sighed a little as she slipped from Stephen’s embrace. + 

“Well⁠—we’ll see what Isabel has to say,” she said. + 

III + 

“I don’t see why,” said Isabel, “you object to Cicily’s marrying Jack. Poor child, he’s going to war next month. He may be killed⁠—” Her lip was trembling. + 

“Well,” said Muriel, “I don’t see why you object to Belle’s marrying Albert. He’s going to war next month and he may be killed.” Muriel’s lip was not trembling. Her voice was as logical as her statement. + 

“Belle’s younger,” said Isabel. + 

“Only a year,” said Jane. + 

“And Belle’s different,” said Isabel. “Cicily’s always equal to any situation. She’s so much more dominating. Cicily’s one of the people you know will always come out on top. And Jack adores her. He’s always adored her.” + 

“Well, Albert’s one of the people you know will always come out on top,” said Muriel. “I’m sure he’s very dominating. And he’s very much in love with Belle. I can’t see why they shouldn’t be very happy.” + 

“Of course,” said Isabel, producing her handkerchief, “neither of them may ever come home from France.” + 

“But again they may,” said Jane a trifle cynically. “If they don’t, of course, I suppose a war marriage would not really hurt anyone. But if they do, they’ll have to live with each other for another fifty years or so.” + 

“It’s very easy to see,” said Isabel reproachfully, from the depths of the handkerchief, “that you haven’t given a son to the nation.” + 

Jane felt a little ashamed of her cynical utterance. It was all wrong, however, to confuse the practical issues with sentimentality. They had been discussing the problem for hours in the Lakewood living-room. Robin and Isabel and Muriel had come out for dinner in order to discuss it, and now it was half-past ten and they were no nearer a solution than they had been at seven. Robin and Stephen had said very little all evening. Jane and Muriel and Isabel had said a great deal. But from the very beginning of the argument, Jane had been conscious of a fundamental difference between her point of view and that of the mothers of the prospective bridegrooms. Isabel and Muriel were staunchly united in wishing their sons to have everything⁠—anything⁠—before they went to the front. + 

“Those young lives,” said Isabel, now frankly sobbing, “may end in another two months. We owe those boys all the fulfilment we can give them.” + 

Of course, however, she did not want Belle to marry Albert Lancaster. Logic had never been Isabel’s strong point. She wanted Cicily to marry Jack and Belle to consent to an engagement. Albert would not be twenty until the first of August. And twenty was a preposterous age for a husband. Jane could easily understand, however, if Isabel couldn’t, why pretty little pink-and-white Belle wanted to marry him. + 

Albert Lancaster was a very alluring young person. He seemed quite grown up. He seemed older than Jack, in fact, who was two years his senior. He had inherited his father’s easy social charm and combined it with his mother’s dark beauty. Not that Albert really looked like Muriel. He looked like her family, however, though not at all like a Jew. Rather like some young Greek of the Golden Age, with his pale, olive-coloured face, his dark eyes and hair, his aquiline nose, his short supercilious Greek lip, and his flat, low Greek brow⁠—a discus-thrower, perhaps, or runner⁠—no, thought Jane, more like a youthful Bacchus. You felt that vine leaves would adorn his hair. They sometimes did, of course. That was probably one of the things that was troubling Isabel. Naturally she could not go into that in front of Muriel. Oh, yes⁠—Jane could quite understand why Belle wanted to marry him. + 

Now Jack, on the other hand. Jack who looked just like Robin⁠—Jack with his snub nose and pleasant friendly twinkle⁠—Jack who had played with Cicily from her cradle⁠—why did Cicily want to marry him? He was a sweet boy, of course. Clever and kindly and considerate. A much safer son-in-law than Albert Lancaster, with his looks and his inheritance and his vine leaves! But still⁠—Jane really could not understand how Cicily could want to marry him. + 

“I don’t see what either of you object to in either marriage,” said Muriel. “We’re all old friends. We’ve known all four children from the day of their birth. There’s plenty of money. Cicily and Belle are charming girls and best friends. The boys have both been to Harvard and are going to war and are very attractive young men. My goodness! When you think what some people’s children marry! I can’t see why it’s not all very suitable.” + 

“But Muriel, they’re children,” put in Stephen from the depths of his armchair. + 

“Kids,” said Robin solemnly, from the corner of the sofa. + 

“I don’t care,” said Muriel. “I was only just twenty when I married, myself. And I’ve often thought,” she continued superbly, “that life would have been quite a little easier for me if Bert hadn’t been nineteen years older than I. I believe in early marriages. I think they keep a boy straight all those important years when his character is forming. And a girl has her babies early and gets through with all that sort of thing when she’s still young enough to enjoy herself⁠—” + 

“But that’s just what’s dangerous about them!” wailed Isabel. Jane knew she had it on the tip of her tongue to say, “Look at you, Muriel!” Time was when she would have said it. Isabel was growing discreet with age. + 

“I think you’re very cynical,” said Muriel. “I think it would be lovely⁠—a double wedding, Jane, in your beautiful garden⁠—” + 

“In any case,” said Isabel, “I think Belle should be married from her father’s house. It’s very sweet of you, Jane, to offer⁠—” + 

“I haven’t offered!” cried Jane. “I haven’t done anything all evening but say we shouldn’t let them. The boys will be sailing in six weeks⁠—” She saw, instantly, that she had not helped her cause at all. Isabel again buried her face in her handkerchief. Muriel returned to the charge. + 

“If little Steve were twenty, instead of fourteen, Jane, you wouldn’t be so unfeeling!” + 

That was quite true, reflected Jane. If little Steve were the age to make suitable cannon fodder, she would want him to have everything, everything life had to give, before he went to France. + 

“I suppose,” said Isabel, wiping her eyes, “I suppose we’ll have to give in.” + 

“Of course we will,” said Muriel briskly. Then added piously, “My greatest regret is that dear Bert isn’t able to share in Albert’s happiness.” + 

“How is he now, Muriel?” asked Isabel curiously. For a moment the war weddings were forgotten. + 

“Oh⁠—quite helpless,” said Muriel. “In bed, of course. He can’t talk and I don’t know how much he does understand. He has two very good nurses, however. Such pretty girls. I hope Bert can realize how pretty they are⁠—” + 

“But Isabel,” said Jane, returning to more important issues, “you don’t mean you think we’ve lost the fight? You don’t mean you think we ought to let them?” + 

“How can we help it?” said Isabel. “But about the double wedding⁠—” + 

“Oh, I think that would be lovely!” said Muriel again. “Your apartment is so small, Isabel, and June’s so pretty in the country. If Jane will take it off your hands⁠—” + 

“I won’t take it off her hands,” said Jane. “Anyway, I think we oughtn’t to decide until we’ve talked it all over with Papa.” + 

“Oh⁠—Papa!” said Isabel doubtfully. “You know how Papa is, Jane. He’s really quite⁠—difficult, sometimes. The war has aged him awfully.” + 

“I don’t think he’s difficult,” said Jane. “I think he’s very wise. And I think we ought to talk with Mrs. Lester.” + 

“Well, Jane,” said Muriel, “you know Mother’s eighty. Of course she’s wonderful and she adores Albert, but I often think she’s a little out of sympathy with the modern generation. Rather critical, I mean.” + 

“Mamma’s terribly critical,” said Isabel. “Sometimes I think she just hates her grandchildren.” + 

“She doesn’t understand them,” said Jane. “But she loves them. And Papa adores them. He’s always been so proud of Jack, Isabel⁠—with the name and all.” + 

“Then he ought to want to see him happy,” said Isabel. She rose with a sigh as she spoke. “Come on, Muriel, we must be getting back to town.” + 

“What do you think, Robin?” asked Jane. “You haven’t said a word all evening.” + 

“I think it’s fierce,” said Robin solemnly. “Like life.” + 

“But what can we do?” persisted Jane. + 

“Nothing, probably,” said Robin. “Again like life.” + 

Jane slipped her arm through Stephen’s. They walked slowly with their guests to the front door. + 

“Well⁠—I’ll talk to Belle again,” said Isabel. “Perhaps she’ll listen to reason. And I’ll write to Jack at Rockford before I go to bed tonight.” + 

“I’m going to wire Albert,” said Muriel. “A very hopeful wire. I think he needs cheering.” + 

“I’ll take it up with Cicily,” said Jane. “And Stephen wants to talk to her. But I know it won’t do a bit of good.” + 

“Good night,” said Isabel, from the depths of the motor. “Button up your coat, Robin. It’s a cold evening for June.” + 

“Good night,” said Jane. The motor crunched slowly around the gravel curve of the driveway. Jane turned to Stephen. “Stephen,” she said, “what will we do?” + 

“Let nature take its course, I guess,” said Stephen grimly. “You didn’t get much help from Isabel.” + 

“Wasn’t Muriel terrible?” said Jane. “Did you hear what she said about Bert’s trained nurses?” + 

“Yes,” said Stephen, turning back to the front door. + 

“I’m glad it’s not Albert,” said Jane solemnly, as she entered the hall. “I’m awfully sorry for Isabel. I couldn’t bear it, Stephen, really, I couldn’t bear it, if Cicily were going to marry Bert Lancaster’s son.” + 

“It’s pretty rough all right,” said Stephen. “I’m sorry for Robin.” + 

“He’s always adored Belle,” said Jane. + 

“I’ve always adored Cicily,” said Stephen. + 

“I know,” said Jane. “But we like Jack.” + 

“He’s a nice kid,” said Stephen. “But as a husband for Cicily⁠—” + 

“I know,” said Jane. They stood for a moment, gazing rather helplessly into each other’s eyes. + 

“Well,” said Stephen, turning to bolt the front door, “we’d better go up to bed. I’ll turn out the lights.” + 

He went back into the living-room. Jane started up the stairs. She was still overcome with a sense of inadequacy for not having foreseen this calamity. But who could have foreseen it? It was perfectly preposterous. What was the matter with the rising generation? What was the matter with her own? She thought again of herself and André. Of her father and mother. She felt she sympathized with them, as never before. But with Cicily, too, when she thought of André. First love⁠—was there not a bloom about it that never came again? What would her life have been if she had married André? If she had married André would he seem now like Stephen? If she had married André she would never have loved Jimmy. She would never have known Jimmy. Jimmy would be alive now, married to Agnes, living in New York. Jane could not imagine her life without her love for Jimmy. Without her marriage to Stephen, for that matter. Yet when she thought of André and of her young self as she had been that last winter before she went to Bryn Mawr⁠— + 

Your inner life⁠—how confusing it all was! A chaos of conflicting loyalties! You would like to think, of course, that you were the sort of woman who was capable of experiencing, once and forever, a central, dominating passion. But as far as the essential sense of emotional intimacy went, she might as well be André’s wife, or Jimmy’s, that moment, as Stephen’s. Why had things turned out as they had? Predestination was probably the answer. Cause and effect. One thing leading to another. Free will was only a delusion. Why not turn fatalist, pure and simple, and not worry any longer? Not care. + 

But you had to care about your children. Worry about them, too. You had to and you ought to. When you thought of them all theories of predestination were completely shattered. + 

Jane turned to smile at Stephen, as he entered the blue bedroom. He looked terribly tired and quite a little discouraged, but he gave her an answering smile. + 

IV + 

“The older I grow, Papa,” said Jane very seriously, “the more I admire your technique as a parent.” + 

“That’s very flattering of you, kid,” said Mr. Ward with a twinkle. + 

“Why, Isabel and I never gave you and Mamma any trouble,” Jane went on, still very seriously. + 

“Oh, I don’t know about that, kid,” interrupted Mr. Ward. “You went to Bryn Mawr over your mother’s dead body⁠—” + 

“Oh⁠—Bryn Mawr!” threw in Jane contemptuously. + 

“It seemed very important at the time,” said Mr. Ward. “She thought it would damn you to eternal spinsterhood. And before that you had embarked at the age of seventeen on a clandestine engagement⁠—” + 

“It wasn’t clandestine!” protested Jane. “We told you right away!” + 

“Yes, you did,” admitted Mr. Ward, with his indulgent twinkle. “You were very good children. Still⁠—it was a bit disquieting⁠—” + 

They were sitting side by side on the old brown velvet sofa in the Pine Street library. The brilliant June sunshine was pouring in the west window, striking the glass bookcase doors and making them look a little dusty, just as it always had from time immemorial. The firelight was dancing on the shiny surfaces of polished walnut, here and there in the darker corners, and shining on the big brass humidor on the desk that held Mr. Ward’s cigars. Mr. Ward always had a fire, now, even in summer. The room was hotter than it used to be and the big branching rubber tree in the west window was gone. Otherwise everything about the Pine Street library was completely unchanged. + 

Everything, that is, but Mr. Ward himself. Jane, looking tenderly across the sofa at her father, was suddenly conscious of how old and frail he seemed. Isabel was right. The war had aged him. Or perhaps it was his retirement from business that had taken place two years before. Mr. Ward lived, now, in his little brown library. When Jane dropped in, she always found him there, settled comfortably in his leather armchair, reading biographies, or poring over the war news, or perhaps just smoking, reflectively, a solitary cigar. + 

The room was really very warm. Jane looked at the smouldering fire. Her glance, wandering casually over the familiar mantelshelf, met the Bard of Avon’s wise mahogany eye. The Bard of Avon always made her think of her wedding ceremony. + 

“Papa,” said Jane, “how can you tell, how can you possibly tell, just whom your children ought to marry?” + 

“You can’t,” said Mr. Ward promptly. “But you can make a pretty good guess at whom they ought not to.” + 

“But how can you stop them?” said Jane. + 

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Ward very seriously after a little pause. + 

“You stopped me,” said Jane. “You stopped me because you made me feel, somehow or other, though I didn’t agree with you, that you were inevitably right. Right, because you were my father. That’s what’s gone out of the family relationship since I was seventeen, Papa. Children don’t think you are right any longer, just because you are a parent.” + 

“Well, you’re not,” said Mr. Ward promptly. “That’s probably a step in the right direction, kid. What’s known as progress.” + 

“Well, it makes life terribly difficult for parents,” sighed Jane. “And I can’t help thinking it may make life terribly difficult for children.” + 

“Life’s terribly difficult at times for everyone,” said Mr. Ward. “A little thing like filial obedience doesn’t solve all the problems.” + 

“When I think of the ex cathedra pronouncements that Mamma used to make!” cried Jane. “Why, I never thought of questioning them!” + 

“And were they always right?” asked Mr. Ward. + 

“They were usually wrong,” said Jane. “But at least they stopped discussion and they decided the issue. Parents used to be just like umpires. All they had to do was to make a decision and stick to it!” + 

“It wasn’t an ideal system,” was Mr. Ward’s comment. + 

“You didn’t question it when it was in fashion,” retorted Jane. “You didn’t have the slightest hesitation in forbidding me to marry André. But we loved each other. We truly did, Papa. You never really took that into consideration. I might have been very happy as André’s wife.” + 

Mr. Ward’s glance was just a little intent as he contemplated his younger daughter. + 

“You’ve been very happy as Stephen’s wife, kid,” he said gently. + 

“Yes,” said Jane uncertainly. Words were too crude to define the subtleties of emotion. “Yes, I’ve been happy. But my marrying him was awfully irrelevant.” Suddenly that statement seemed terribly disloyal to Stephen. “You know, Papa,” she said in extenuation, “a war changed everything in my life.” + 

There was a pause, for a moment, in the sunlit room. Jane did not look at her father, but she knew, without looking, from his sudden, breathless silence that he had suffered a slight sense of shock. She realized then that her words were open to misinterpretation. She glanced quickly up at him. He was shocked. He looked at her a moment a little uncertainly. Then, “Which war, Jane?” he asked steadily. + 

She was awfully glad that he had put the direct question. In answering it she could answer all the unspoken questions that had been worrying him for the last four years. + 

“The Spanish one,” she said gravely. “The other didn’t⁠—didn’t really affect my action. I mean⁠—I mean it was all settled before⁠—” Her voice was failing her. She could not bear to mention Jimmy’s name. + 

“I’m glad to hear it, kid,” said her father gently. + 

He understood. She would not have to mention it. Jane drew a long breath and felt the emotional tension of the moment snap as she did so. She could return now to the problems of the younger generation. + 

“All I mean is,” she went on brightly, “you can’t really tell, can you, what will bring your children happiness? Perhaps they ought to decide for themselves⁠—” + 

As she spoke, Mrs. Ward opened the library door. Isabel followed her into the room. They had been talking together in Mrs. Ward’s bedroom. + 

“Well, I hope you’ve convinced Jane that she must put her foot down,” said Mrs. Ward briskly. Her hand was on the bell-rope to summon Minnie to bring in the tea. + 

“Mamma, you don’t know what it’s like to handle Belle and Cicily,” said Isabel wearily. + 

“I handled you and Jane!” retorted Mrs. Ward. “And very foolish you often were! If it hadn’t been for your father and me⁠—” + 

Jane and her father burst simultaneously into irreverent laughter. Mrs. Ward looked quite offended. + 

“You don’t make it any easier, John, to control the grandchildren,” she said severely. + 

“I’ve retired,” said Mr. Ward, when he had subdued his laughter. “From my family as from my business. At seventy-two I’m glad to be a spectator. I hand the controls over to Jane.” + 

V + 

“Jenny’s really so homely,” said Cicily frankly, “that I think we ought to feature it.” + 

“Feature it?” questioned Flora. + 

“Yes,” said Cicily, “make her look quaint, you know; as if she were meant to be funny.” + 

“The first duty of a bridesmaid, in any case,” said Muriel, “is to look less pretty than the bride.” + 

“No one could help looking less pretty than these brides,” said Flora, with a glance from Belle to Cicily. + 

Isabel looked pleased. Jane felt herself smiling. Jenny did not seem at all insulted by her sister’s candour. + 

They were all sitting in Flora’s hat shop. They had just decided on the model for the wedding veils and were now discussing the bridesmaid’s hat. + 

Flora’s hat shop was doing a booming business. It had been just about to die of inanition three years ago when the Belgian babies came along and gave it a new lease of life. Flora had been planning to close it when the idea came to her to change it into a war charity. “Aux Armes des Alliés,” she had rechristened it, and pasted French war posters all over the cubistic designs of the coach-house. She had charged fantastic prices and had really made a great deal of money. She had photographs of all the Belgian babies she supported, on the walls of the fitting-rooms. In spite of the submarines she made semiannual trips to Paris for the hats and the photographs. She was a member of several French relief committees and so managed to get a passport. When Mr. Furness died two years before, she had given large sums to the funds for war orphans. She had made a great many French friends and was talking, now, of going to live in Paris when the war was over⁠—if it ever was. She would like a little apartment out near Passy. But now she was discussing the bridesmaid’s hat. + 

“I think,” she said critically, backing away from Jenny and looking fixedly at her plain little face and straight, blonde, bobbed hair⁠—“I think⁠—a poke bonnet. Yes, Jane! A pink poke bonnet⁠—very pale. You’re right, Cicily, she must be quaint! A hooped skirt, Isabel, a pink hooped skirt, with little garlands around it and a sweet, tight little bodice. Pale pink taffeta, don’t you think, Muriel? And a little 1860 bouquet with ribbon streamers and a white lace frill. Oh, Jenny, my dear, you’ll be charming! We’ll emphasize your angles. You’ll look like a cross-stitched design on a sampler! How old are you?” + 

“Sixteen,” said Jenny meekly. + 

“You don’t look it,” said Flora. “Do you think, Jane, that pantalettes would be going too far?” + 

Jane thought they would. + 

“I suppose you’re right,” said Flora, “though I always think a wedding should be primarily a pageant. This one will be lovely. The hot weather will bring out all the roses. What are you wearing, Jane?” + 

“What does the mother of the bride always wear?” said Jane ironically. “Beige chiffon, of course. I didn’t think I had any choice.” + 

“And Isabel, too?” said Flora critically. + 

“Well, no. Now that I think of it, Isabel is a mother of a bride and she’s wearing grey.” + 

“Muriel’s dress is lovely,” said Flora. “I’m making her hat. Mauve. Let me make yours, Jane. For Heaven’s sake, get a good one, for once!” + 

“All right,” said Jane indifferently. “I’d be glad not to have to bother about it.” + 

“We’ve got to go,” said Cicily. “We’re going down to Crichton’s with Aunt Isabel to pick out my tea-set.” + 

“I chose Belle’s yesterday,” said Muriel as she rose. + 

“It’s lovely,” said Isabel. “It seems just a moment ago that you were choosing your own.” + 

“I know,” said Muriel. “And Flora and Jane were trying on those blue bridesmaids’ dresses. They were pretty.” + 

Jane thought of Flora’s blue bridesmaid’s dress lying crumpled on her bedroom chair the morning after her mother’s death. She thought of herself hanging it up in Flora’s closet, while Flora dressed in the little black frock that Mrs. Lester had brought over. She wondered if Flora were thinking of it, too. But Flora’s face was very tranquil. + 

“Fittings for all of you, Wednesday morning,” she said. “I’ll have a beige model here, Jane, for you to look at.” + 

They all went out of the brownstone stable and stood for a moment in the old carriage court. The Furnesses’ back yard looked just as it always had. Flora had the playhouse painted every year. But the houses across Rush Street had all been rented to business firms. Dressmakers and milliners and decorators had signs over every door. The clean frilled lace curtains and evenly drawn shades in Flora’s Victorian mansion seemed strangely out of place in their commercial environment. They recalled a vanished era. Flora’s lace curtains looked just like her mother’s⁠—just as clean and just as frilly and just as Victorian. She kept the old place up beautifully. She even kept the orange tree blooming in the conservatory. But if she were going to live in Paris⁠— + 

Jane sighed. It did not seem to her just a moment ago that she had tried on Muriel’s blue bridesmaid’s dress. + 

VI + 

Jane stood at Isabel’s side in the front row of the little congregation that had gathered in the rose garden. On her other hand, pressed close against the tightly drawn white satin ribbon, stood little Steve. Little Steve, at fourteen, was taller than his mother and looked exactly like his father. He was wearing his first long white flannel trousers, and Jane knew that he considered the occasion of the double wedding mainly important as his début into man’s estate. Behind Jane stood Mr. and Mrs. Ward and Alden Carver, the only representative of the Carver family who had come West for the wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Carver no longer cared to undertake transcontinental travel. They were both over seventy. Silly had stayed at Gull Rocks to look after them. + 

Across the grassy aisle, Muriel, radiant under the new mauve hat, rested one graceful mauve arm on the back of Mrs. Lester’s wheelchair. Rosalie and Edith, once more imported from Cleveland for a family festival, supported their mother on the other side. Mrs. Lester, herself, colossal in shiny black taffeta, blinked like a wrinkled sibyl in the brilliant June sunshine. There was something a little sinister about her massive, motionless figure. Her aged face, under her mantilla cap of black lace, looked like a mask of tan wax. The wrinkles, the salient nose, the cascade of double chins might have been a clever sculptor’s effigy of old age. Only the eyelids moved. Her bright dark eyes glittered behind them with a gleam of helpless intelligence that seemed imprisoned in the motionless mask. Mrs. Lester had deplored these marriages. + 

Behind the two families the garden was filled with guests. The orchestra beyond the clump of evergreens had just slipped from the riotous strains of “Tipperary” into the first sentimental notes of the Barcarolle from the Tales of Hoffmann. Muriel had requested it. It had been played at her wedding. Jane and Isabel had thought that the less this wedding was like Muriel’s the better. Nevertheless, they had conceded the Barcarolle. + 

Jane stood motionless, her eyes on the arch of Dorothy Perkins roses under which the clergyman would soon appear. It was outlined against the pure blue of the June sky. High overhead one white cloud floated, a flying dome of alabaster, above the improvised altar. The clergyman was in ambush, behind the hedge with Jack and Albert and their attendant groomsmen, waiting for the bridal party to appear at the other end of the garden. Jane wondered why they did not come. She had kissed Cicily and arranged her train, just before walking up the aisle. She wished she could lean out, like Steve, over the white satin ribbons, and see whether anything had gone wrong. + 

As she was wondering, the orchestra, in response to some hidden signal, swelled into Lohengrin. The clergyman, with the promptness of a marionette, swung out in white vestments under the arch of pink bloom. The four young men in khaki followed him. Jane heard Isabel catch her breath sharply at the sight of Jack. She saw Albert smile in self-conscious reassurance at Muriel across the aisle. Jack was staring straight down the grassy path, waiting for his first glimpse of Cicily. The first pair of khaki-clad ushers passed slowly by Jane. Then the second. Then the third. Then Jenny, successfully quaint, in her ridiculous hoopskirt. Her pale, plain little face was barely visible in the depths of Flora’s poke bonnet. What Jane could see of it looked intensely serious. Her hands shook a little as they gripped the 1860 bouquet. Her knuckles were white. She turned to face the congregation just as Belle passed by, a cloud of floating tulle, on Robin’s arm. Albert stepped out to meet her. Then Jane saw Cicily, another cloud, her head held high, her feet spurning the earth, her hand on Stephen’s elbow. She must have smiled at Jack. His funny snub-nosed face reflected the radiance of that smile. The Lohengrin faded away into silence. The clergyman took up the ritual. + 

“Dearly beloved brethren, we are met together in the sight of God and this company⁠—” + 

In the sight of God. Was God really present, thought Jane, this sunny June afternoon, looking at them all, in her familiar Lakewood garden? Did God have time to take in all the weddings, or did He pick and choose? Did He sometimes withhold His blessing? Could God be summoned peremptorily to any altar? Did He never have another engagement? Was He not too busy this afternoon, for instance, on the battlefields of France, to look in on this little ceremony in a Lakewood garden? The clergyman’s voice droned on. + 

“⁠—the holy estate of matrimony, which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocence⁠—” + 

In the time of man’s innocence. That was, of course, the time for weddings. Jane thought fleetingly of André. Of herself in his arms. These four children were innocent enough. Too innocent. That was the difficulty. Too innocent to enter into that holy estate reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. The modern generation was neither reverent, discreet, advised, nor sober. They were in fear of nothing. Certainly not of God. Certainly not of their parents. Robin and Stephen, standing side by side in that khaki-clad group of striplings, a little bald, a little grey, a little stooped, a little paunchy in their formal black broadcloth cutaways, waiting to give, reluctantly, these women to be married to these men, were the only reverent, discreet, advised, and sober individuals before that improvised altar. They were in fear of God. They were in fear of everything⁠—for their children. But fear was foolish. Fear was, perhaps, hysterical. They were all good children. Isabel’s sobs recalled Jane’s attention to the ritual of betrothal. + 

“I, Cicily, take thee, John Ward, for my wedded husband⁠—” + 

John Ward. Her father’s namesake. Isabel’s first baby was marrying her own. Isabel’s baby⁠—only yesterday an armful of afghans⁠—now a soldier in khaki, suitable cannon fodder, was marrying Cicily with her head like a dandelion. Marrying Cicily not twenty feet away from the site of the old sandpile where they had built their sand castles⁠— + 

“I, Albert, take thee, Isabel, for my wedded wife⁠—” + 

Albert Lancaster⁠—the second Albert Lancaster⁠—Muriel’s beautiful little boy who had grown up to look like a youthful Bacchus and to act like one, too, sometimes⁠—Cicily’s laughing story of his behavior at the bachelors’ dinner at the University Club the night before had been really outrageous⁠—Albert Lancaster, who was his father’s son⁠—but only nineteen and heart-breakingly innocent in spite of the vine leaves⁠—was marrying Belle⁠—little Belle, with a face like an apple blossom. + 

When had she first thought that Belle looked like an apple blossom? Four years ago, at the foot of the stairs in the Lakewood hall, with Jimmy framed in the portieres of the living-room door. Jimmy, watching her kiss little Belle. Jimmy, whose mocking, informal ghost had curiously no place at this ceremony in the Lakewood garden. It paled before Stephen’s substantial presence. Stephen, who adored Cicily and had made the sandpile and had shared so consolingly in the worry and hurry and foreboding of the last hectic weeks. Weeks in which the sustaining sense of Jimmy’s cheerful companionship had faded ever so imperceptibly, but irrevocably, out of the foreground of Jane’s reveries. Lost in the bustle of preparation, the preoccupation of misgiving, Jane, for the first time since Jimmy’s death in France, had had no time for Jimmy. + 

“If I had gone away with him,” she reflected, “if I had married him, I suppose we should both be here today, watching Stephen give away Cicily. I should be feeling about Stephen just as I do now”⁠—for after all there was only one way to feel about Stephen, standing helplessly by Cicily’s side before that improvised altar⁠—“and feeling about Jimmy the way I did then⁠—” + 

A faint shiver of repulsion passed over Jane. She felt herself suddenly submerged in an ignoble sense of relief at the realization of domestic decencies forever maintained, of vulgar complexities forever avoided. Were worlds well lost for love? Jane did not know. Jane’s love for Jimmy had presented in her life an absolutely insoluble problem. His death had placed a question mark beyond it. If he had lived, perhaps she might have arrived at a solution. She only knew, now, that she had acted in response to an inner instinct so strong that love itself had stood vanquished before it. The instinct was victorious, but the victory was barren. She had tried to preserve the happiness of others. In reward she had been left only with a feeble, futile feeling that, in any event, her own happiness could never have been attained. A barren victory. A victory that was essentially a defeat⁠— + 

Nevertheless, it was impossible to think of Jimmy standing at her elbow, bound by the ties of wedlock at Cicily’s marriage. He was a phantom lover. He had to be. No other kind was possible for a Lakewood housewife⁠—for Mrs. Stephen Carver⁠—But should one sacrifice love to nothing more than a sense of decorum? + 

The orchestra swelled joyously into the Mendelssohn wedding march. Jane had not heard the clergyman’s last solemn adjuration. The bridal couples turned from the altar. The groomsmen and ushers drew their swords. Bright, virgin blades, flashing in the June sunshine. They made an arch of steel. Soon those swords would be spitting Germans. Today they formed a nuptial canopy. Swords should be beaten into ploughshares. They should not spit Germans. Neither should they make an arch, a churchly, Gothic arch, a glamorous, romantic arch, under which young warriors⁠—too young warriors⁠—led their brides from glamour to reality. + 

Cicily, radiant on Jack’s arm, threw her a sunshine smile. Belle, under shy eyelids, flashed a glance at Isabel. Jenny pranced down the grassy aisle to the rhythm of the Mendelssohn. Her nervousness was all gone. She was young and absurd and adorable. The ushers gallantly sheathed their swords and fell in to follow. Jane felt Stephen’s hand upon her arm. She knew that she was looking at him stupidly. There were tears in his eyes. Robin was blowing his nose. Isabel was frankly weeping. Muriel, beyond the satin ribbons, was powdering her tear-stained cheeks. It was over. Jane realized that she had experienced no emotion whatever during the brief ceremony. It had been routed by thought. Confused, perplexing thought. Emotion would come, Jane knew, if she looked into Stephen’s eyes. She would not look into them. She would take his arm and hold her head high and walk down that grassy aisle in the sight of that company⁠—and God, if He were really there⁠—as if she had approved of these weddings. Stephen read her heart. No one else should read it. Except her father⁠—Jane caught his grave, anxious glance⁠—and God, whose glance she could not catch. + 

The Mendelssohn had ceased. The congregation were nodding and whispering and smiling. The orchestra was playing “Over There.” Jane slipped her fingers through the crook of Stephen’s elbow. The ushers, already gathered around the punch-bowl under the apple tree, had begun to sing. The young male chorus swelled out joyously over the sunlit garden. + 

“Over there! Over there! + 

Send the word⁠—send the word over there! + 

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, + 

With the drums rum-tumming everywhere! + 

So prepare! Say a prayer!⁠—” + 

Jane moved with light step down the grassy aisle to the rollicking rhythm of the war song. If God were in that garden, He knew her misgivings. He knew that she was praying He had blessed those marriages. If there was a God. And if He was in that garden. + 

II + 

I + 

“Muriel thinks,” said Isabel, “that Belle should go into mourning.” + 

“I’m not surprised,” said Jane. “The Lesters always had a lot of family feeling.” + 

“Just the same,” said Isabel, “I’ve just bought all her maternity clothes. So soon after the trousseau. And they’re so pretty. Modern clothes are really very concealing. When I think of the tight waists we had to wear⁠—and all those pleats put in to let out! Don’t you think it seems ridiculous to order another set?” + 

“Yes,” said Jane. “But Muriel adored her mother. So did Edith and Rosalie.” + 

“Oh, I’ve no doubt,” said Isabel, “that they’ll all flap about like black crows for two years. But Belle’s so young⁠—she hardly knew Mrs. Lester⁠—and the baby’s coming in two months. She’s worried about Albert. I hate to plunge her into black.” + 

Isabel was sitting on the window-seat in Jane’s blue bedroom. They were discussing Mrs. Lester’s death, which had occurred the night before, and Mrs. Lester’s funeral, which would take place next day. Mrs. Lester had died in her sleep. She had been found dead by her maid coming in with her breakfast tray. Her death had been a great shock to Muriel. + 

“Belle hasn’t heard from Albert?” asked Jane. “Any plans, I mean?” + 

“He has no plans,” said Isabel resentfully. “No more than Jack has. How can they plan, poor darlings? I think it’s outrageous for the Government to keep them hanging around France four months after the armistice! As far as I can see, it didn’t do anybody a bit of good for them to go over. They might just as well have stayed in Rockford.” + 

That was quite true, reflected Jane. Jack had not even seen action, Albert had spent the last two days of the war sitting in a muddy trench. Neither boy had struck a blow at the Germans. Albert had not seen nearly as much fighting in France as Stephen had at San Juan Hill. + 

“Muriel’s going to be a dreadful mother-in-law,” said Isabel irrelevantly. + 

Jane could not help smiling. She knew what Cicily thought of Isabel in that capacity. Belle and Cicily, in the absence of their young husbands, had seen a great deal of their mothers-in-law. + 

“You’d think,” Cicily had said, only last evening to Jane and Stephen, “you’d think she was going to have the baby⁠—not me!” + 

“You’d think,” said Isabel, while Jane was smiling, “you’d think Muriel was going to have Belle’s baby. She’s bought her some lovely things, of course, but she’s always interfering. And now she wants her to wear crepe!” + 

“I’d like to wear crepe myself,” said Jane. “I loved Mrs. Lester.” + 

“She was a grand old matriarch,” said Isabel, rising with a sigh. “Still, she was over eighty. Muriel knew she couldn’t live forever. Queer, isn’t it, that Bert should outlive her⁠—in the state he’s been in for the last five years?” + 

“How is Papa?” asked Jane, rising in her turn. + 

“Oh, much better. His cold is almost gone. Dr. Bancroft says he can go to the funeral.” + 

“Not up to Graceland?” said Jane, with a glance at the February sleet storm that was silvering the garden. “In this weather?” + 

“I don’t know about Graceland,” said Isabel, “but, anyway, the church. They’ve asked him to be an honorary pallbearer.” + 

“Of course,” said Jane. “I suppose he was Mrs. Lester’s oldest friend. He was awfully fond of her.” + 

“Well, everyone was,” said Isabel. “But I’m not going to let Belle go into mourning.” + 

“Black for the funeral,” urged Jane pacifically. + 

“Of course,” said Isabel. “That’s only decent.” She turned toward the door. “How is Cicily feeling today?” + 

“Very well,” said Jane. “She’s in town at the concert.” + 

“They go everywhere, don’t they?” said Isabel. “They don’t care how they look.” + 

“I think that’s fine,” said Jane. + 

“But it’s funny,” said Isabel. “Last Friday night at the Casino I heard Cicily telling Billy Winter that she had engaged a room at the Lying-in Hospital. I spoke to her about that. I didn’t quite like it.” + 

“They take it all as a matter of course,” said Jane. + 

“I know,” said Isabel. “But to a young bachelor⁠—” + 

“I’m sure he didn’t mind,” said Jane. + 

“He didn’t,” said Isabel. “But I thought he should have.” + 

“It’s a different generation, old girl,” said Jane. + 

II + 

Last week it had been a bad cold. The morning after Mrs. Lester’s funeral it had turned into bronchitis. Yesterday it was a touch of pneumonia. Today⁠— + 

Jane stood in the doorway of Mr. Ward’s library, holding a great sheaf of budding Ophelia roses, looking anxiously into Isabel’s worried eyes. + 

“I’m glad you came in, Jane,” said Isabel soberly. + 

“Of course I came in,” said Jane. She walked quietly across the room to her father’s desk and put her flowers down on the two days’ accumulation of mail that waited for him, propped up against the brass humidor. Then she turned again to face Isabel. + 

“I just can’t realize it,” she said. “Day before yesterday I was talking to him, here in this room.” + 

“I’m glad you came while Dr. Bancroft was here.” Isabel’s voice was as worried as her eyes. “He’s upstairs with Mamma.” + 

“How’s Mamma taking it?” asked Jane. + 

“Oh⁠—she’s fine,” said Isabel. “She always is, you know, when there’s anything really the matter. She didn’t leave Papa’s bedside all night. I don’t think she got a wink of sleep. Minnie’s been awful.” + 

“Awful?” questioned Jane. + 

“About the trained nurse. She just took one look at her and turned ugly. You know how Minnie is.” + 

“She’s very capable,” said Jane. “And she adores us all.” + 

“Yes,” said Isabel, “but she likes to run the whole show herself. Mamma’s been very silly about Minnie. She’s let her think she was indispensable.” + 

“She pretty nearly is,” sighed Jane. “She’s not really acting up, is she?” + 

“Oh, no,” said Isabel. “She’s just terribly gloomy. Goes around, you know, with a tremendous chip on her shoulder. She does what the nurse tells her to, but she does it grudgingly. She looks as if she’d like to say, ‘Don’t blame me if it rains!’ ” + 

“Does it bother Mamma?” asked Jane. + 

“Of course it does,” said Isabel. “You know she always has Minnie’s attitude on her mind.” + 

“It’s ridiculous,” said Jane, “at a time like this!” + 

“Of course it is,” said Isabel. Both women turned at the sound of a step in the hall. + 

“There’s the doctor now,” said Jane, picking up her roses. + 

Mrs. Ward entered the room, followed by Dr. Bancroft. She had on her grey silk dinner dress. Jane realized that she could not have changed it since the night before. Her face looked terribly worn and weary and worried. She had taken off the black velvet ribbon she always wore about her throat in the evening. In the slight V-shaped décollétage of the grey silk dress the cords of her neck, freed from the restraining band, hung in slack, yellow furrows. There were great brown circles under her tired eyes. Dr. Bancroft, brisk and immaculate in his blue serge morning suit, looked extremely clean and clever and competent beside her. + 

“Jane!” said Mrs. Ward. “I didn’t know you’d come.” Her face quivered, a trifle emotionally, at the sight of the roses. She kissed her younger daughter. + 

“How is he?” Jane’s eyes sought the doctor’s. + 

“Fine!” said Dr. Bancroft briskly. “In excellent shape, all things considered.” + 

“Is the second lung affected?” asked Jane. + 

“Just one tiny spot,” said Dr. Bancroft very cheerfully. + 

“Can I see him?” asked Jane. “Can I take him these roses?” + 

“Certainly,” said Dr. Bancroft. “But don’t try to talk to him.” + 

“He’s very drowsy,” said Mrs. Ward. + 

“He’s tired,” said Dr. Bancroft. “His system’s been putting up a big fight all night. His vitality is amazing for a man of his age.” He smiled pleasantly at Mrs. Ward. “Now, don’t worry. What he needs is rest. Miss Coulter will order the oxygen. You’d better lie down yourself, this morning, Mrs. Ward. You look all in.” He turned from the doorway and met Minnie on the threshold. She glanced at him inimically. Minnie looked all in, too. But very gloomy. + 

“Get a nap, yourself, Minnie,” smiled Dr. Bancroft. “There is nothing you can do.” + 

“I’ll not nap,” said Minnie briefly. + 

“I’ll drop in again after luncheon,” said the doctor casually. “And, by the way, Mrs. Ward⁠—I’m sending up a second nurse for the night work.” + 

“A second⁠—nurse?” faltered Mrs. Ward. + 

Jane and Isabel looked into each other’s eyes. + 

“Just to spare you,” said Dr. Bancroft. “You must save your strength.” He smiled pleasantly at Jane and Isabel. “Good morning.” He brushed by Minnie’s outraged figure and was gone. + 

Jane stood a moment in silence, fingering her roses. Her father had pneumonia⁠—double pneumonia. And all because of the folly of going to Mrs. Lester’s funeral. Standing beside an open grave for twenty minutes, bareheaded in the February breeze, ankle-deep in the February slush of a Graceland lot. Paying the last tribute, of course, to the friendship of a lifetime. But twenty minutes⁠—by the grave of an old, old lady whose life was over⁠—and now⁠—double pneumonia. + 

“Well⁠—I guess I’ll go up,” said Jane. How long had they all been staring in silence at the door that had closed behind the doctor? + 

“I’ll take you, Mrs. Carver,” said Minnie officiously. + 

Jane looked steadily into her eager, resentful face. Dear old Minnie, who had been with them all for more than thirty years! Jane slipped her arm around the plump waist above the white apron strings. + 

“Thank you, Minnie,” she said. + 

As she left the room, she saw her mother sink into her father’s leather armchair. She walked slowly down the hall and up the stairs with Minnie. She had a queer dazed feeling that this⁠—this couldn’t be happening. Not to her father. Not to the Wards. Nothing⁠—nothing⁠—really serious had ever happened to them. Jimmy’s death, of course. But that had only happened to her. It had not torn the fabric of family life⁠—it had not uprooted the associations of her earliest childhood. Cicily’s marriage⁠—worrying, perplexing, of course, but not⁠—not terrifying, like this sort of worry. + 

The house seemed quieter than usual. Hushed. Expectant. Jane suddenly remembered the sinister silence of the upper corridor of Flora’s house that April morning twenty-two years ago, when she had walked out under the budding elm trees for her first encounter with death. The battered door⁠—the smell of gas⁠—the feeling of little living Folly beneath her feet⁠—the incredulity⁠—the finality⁠—the horror. And Stephen⁠—hushed young Stephen⁠—standing so gravely between the green-and-gold portieres in Flora’s hall. The terrible vividness of youthful impressions! But why did it all come back to her now? Now⁠—when she was trying to fight off this senseless sense of impending tragedy⁠—of terror. + 

Jane tapped lightly on her father’s door. It was opened by Miss Coulter, in crisp, starched linen. Her smile, as she took the roses, was just as brisk, just as cheerful as Dr. Bancroft’s had been. Jane entered her father’s room. He was lying, under meticulously folded sheets, in the big double black walnut bedstead that he had shared with Jane’s mother since Jane’s earliest memory. His eyes were closed and he was resting easily. His breath came curiously, however, in long, slow gasps. His breast, beneath the meticulously folded sheets, rose and fell, laboriously, with the effort of his breathing. + 

Nevertheless, at the sight of him, Jane felt a sudden flood of reassurance. He did not look very ill. His face, beneath his neatly combed white hair, was smoothly relaxed in sleep. + 

It looked unnatural only because Miss Coulter had removed his gold-framed spectacles. + 

The nurse came softly to the bedside, the roses in a glass vase in her hand. She placed them on the bed table. + 

“I’ll tell him that you brought them, Mrs. Carver,” she murmured. “I think you hadn’t better stay just now.” + 

All sense of reassurance fell away from Jane at her hushed accents. Of course, he was terribly ill. He was seventy-three years old and he had double pneumonia. She would not kiss him⁠—she would not touch him⁠—she would not disturb him. He must have every chance. Jane turned from the bedside and joined Minnie on the threshold. With an air of crisp and kindly competence, Miss Coulter noiselessly closed the bedroom door. + 

When Jane reentered the library, her mother was crying in her father’s armchair. Isabel, standing on the hearthrug, was looking at her a little helplessly. She turned to stare at Jane’s sober face. Jane realized, with a sudden sense of shock, that she had not seen her mother cry since her own wedding day. + 

“Mamma⁠—don’t,” she said brokenly, as she sank down on the arm of her father’s chair. “I think he looks very well⁠—” + 

Mrs. Ward only shook her grey head and went on silently crying. Isabel still stared helplessly from the hearthrug. A curious little flame of macabre excitement was flickering about the ashes of pity and grief and terror that choked Jane’s heart. Her father had double pneumonia. Her father might be going to die. Something really serious had happened to the Wards. + 

III + 

Jane sat in a rocking-chair, drawn closely to her father’s bedside. Beyond the bed, on a little walnut sofa, her mother and Isabel were sitting. At the farther end of the room, in two chairs by the fireside, Robin and Stephen were sharing their quiet vigil. + 

They were waiting in silence. They had been waiting in silence, just like that, for more than three hours. Dr. Bancroft and Miss Coulter had been in and out. They were talking to each other, now, in the dressing-room beyond the fireplace. Jane could hear their whispering voices very faintly in the silence of the sickroom. A silence otherwise unbroken, save for the occasional staccato whirr of a passing motor on the boulevard in front of the house, and by the slow rhythmic cadence of Mr. Ward’s loud, laboured breathing. It was four o’clock in the morning and the motors passed very infrequently. The breathing went steadily on, however, with a dreadful, mechanical regularity. It assaulted the ear. It filled the quiet room like the roar of a bombardment. One shell fell. Then silence. Then another shell. Then silence. Then another shell. + 

The night-light was placed so that the bed lay in shadow, but Jane could see her father’s figure very distinctly. His chest rose and fell, mechanically, in his rhythmic struggle for breath. The oxygen tank had been abandoned. It still stood on the floor beneath the bed table. Mr. Ward’s face was white and pinched and drawn and completely weary⁠—weary with the supreme exhaustion of approaching death. It showed no sign of consciousness. The eyes were closed and the mouth was slightly open. His hands lay relaxed on the meticulously ordered sheets. + 

Jane sat looking at those hands. Old hands, fragile and blue-veined, with a black seal ring upon one little finger. They were still her father’s hands. The approach of death had not altered them as it had the drawn and weary face. The spark of life was in them. They were living hands. The face was terrifying. The face was relaxed, defenceless and beaten. It was no longer her father’s living face. It had lost the spark. + 

But the breathing continued. The breathing continued in slow, even, raucous gasps. The gasps were terrifying, but not as terrifying as the intervals between them. The intervals seemed endless. Shaken by the dreadful deliberation of that laboured breathing, Jane wondered, terrified, in every interval, if the gasp would come again. + 

It did, however. It came with the impersonal regularity of a clock tick. Presently the clock would stop. Her father was dying. He would not live through the night. Three days ago he had sat in his leather armchair, in the library downstairs, lightly reassuring Jane on the state of his bronchitis. Tomorrow he would be dead. The roses that Jane had brought to his bedside were still in the vase on the table. The buds had barely reached their prime. Only that morning her father had commented on their ephemeral, creamy bloom. Those roses would outlive him. Life would go on. + 

Life would go on for Jane without his sustaining presence. Without his tacit sympathy, his love, his watchfulness, his warning, worried glance. He had worried and warned and watched and loved and sympathized over Jane for forty-one years, and now he was dying. He was dying just at the time when Jane felt she could have rewarded his love and sympathy as never before. There was no longer any necessity for worrying and warning and watching over her personal drama. She had grown up. Soon she would grow old. She saw life, now, eye to eye with her father. She, too, had become a spectator. Her children had taken the stage. + 

Once she had worried him awfully. She had not heeded his warning. She had been swept by the intoxication of her love for Jimmy into indifference, into resentment even, toward that warning and that worry. She had given him a very bad time. Jane regretted that now. But she could not regret her love for Jimmy. With all his tenderness, with all his understanding, her father had not tried to understand that love. He had merely deplored it. “Safety first” was always the parental slogan. Parents invariably deplored everything that threatened their children’s security. Whatever their own experience had been, they desired for the younger generation only the most conventional, the most convenient, kind of happiness. + 

Her father’s experience. Jane looked at the worn, white face that lay upon the pillow. It told no tales. The spirit was withdrawn from that face into some remote and impenetrable fastness, where it awaited in solitude the last adventure of life. It was oblivious of love, oblivious of care, oblivious of companionship. Stricken suddenly with a sense of the loneliness of death, Jane leaned forward to take her father’s incredibly inert, intolerably touching hand. The fingers were cold. They returned no answering pressure. Jane softly withdrew her hand. She could not reach him. + 

But was death, as a matter of fact, any more lonely than life? What had Jane ever known about her father’s actual earthly experience? Parents knew little enough of the emotional lives of their children, but children knew nothing of the emotional lives of their parents. The emotional life of a parent was a fantastic thought. In all the forty-one years that they had shared together, Jane had never achieved, she had never even sought to achieve, one single revealing glimpse of the secret stage on which the passionate personal drama of her father’s life had been enacted. + 

What was that drama? Why had he loved her mother? Had he always loved her? Had there been no other girl before, no other woman after, he had met and married her? + 

What had her parents really been, when they shared the romance of their early youth? Jane knew how they had looked. She had always known that because of the pictures in the red plush family album downstairs in the rosewood cabinet in the yellow drawing-room. Glossy, matter-of-fact photographs of the early seventies. Her mother at nineteen, in her wedding dress, with its formal pleats and exaggerated bustle of thick white satin and its little frill of sheer white lace that stood up stiffly at the back of her slender neck and framed her young, round face and the preposterous waterfall of her blonde curly hair. Her graceful young figure was elegantly posed on a photographer’s rustic bridge in the fashionable, backbreaking curve of the “Grecian bend.” A charming, artificial figure. A pretty, grave little face. And her father framed in the oval of the opposite page. Her father in the middle twenties. A handsome young man with big dark eyes and a sensitive mouth and the faintest suspicion of a sideburn on his lean young cheeks. A serious young man, with hair just a little too long and a collar just a little too big, and black satin coat lapels that were cut a trifle queerly. How had those two young people made out with marriage? Jane could not really believe they were her parents. She had no sense of the continuity of their personality. They had died young⁠—those two young people. They had not grown up into Mr. and Mrs. John Ward of Pine Street, who had always seemed to Jane, since her earliest memory, so staid, so settled, so more than middle-aged. + 

“All lives,” her father had said to her before Cicily’s marriage, “are difficult at times.” What had been his difficulties? Jane did not know. The difficulties of Victorian marriages had been mercifully concealed by Victorian reticence from the eyes and ears of Victorian children. But what, for that matter, did Cicily, Jenny, and Steve know of herself and Stephen? + 

Jane’s eyes wandered from the white face on the pillow to her mother’s dim figure sunk on the walnut sofa beyond the bed. Mrs. Ward was looking at her husband. Her eyes were dull with grief, her face expressionless with fatigue. What did her mother know, Jane wondered, that she and Isabel did not, of the passionate personal drama of her father’s life? What did wives know of husbands, or husbands know of wives? Stephen had absolutely no conception of the thoughts that passed daily through her mind. No knowledge whatever of that vast accumulation of confused impressions and vague convictions and wistful desires that made up the world of revery in which she really lived. Stephen had his world of revery, too, of course. Everyone had. In the first disarming experience of love you tried to share that world. You flung open the door. You offered the key. But somehow, in spite of love, with time and incident the door swung slowly shut again. You never noticed it until you found yourself locked securely in, with the key in your own pocket. You really wondered how it had come to be there. You could not remember just when or why you had stopped saying⁠—everything. But at the end of twenty years of marriage it was astounding to consider the number of things, that somehow, you had never said⁠— + 

Jane was roused from revery by Isabel’s sudden movement, by her mother’s sharp, stifled exclamation. She stared at her father’s face. The mouth had dropped slightly more open. The chest was motionless. The slow raucous gasps were silenced. The bombardment had ceased. + 

“Dr. Bancroft! Dr. Bancroft!” cried Isabel shrilly. The doctor appeared instantly in the dressing-room door. He moved quickly to the bedside. Miss Coulter followed him. He took her father’s hand and felt the wrist for a moment in silence. He looked at Mrs. Ward. Robin and Stephen had crossed the room. They stood staring down at Mr. Ward from the foot of the bed. Her mother was crying. Isabel’s arm was around her. They, too, were staring down at Mr. Ward. + 

Her father was dead, thought Jane dully. Her father had died, as she sat at his bedside thinking abstract thoughts of life⁠—of her own personal problems. How could she have thought such thoughts at such a moment? Lost in the complications presented by her own drama, she had not seen the curtain fall on the last act of her father’s life. She had not sensed the final approach of death. She had been totally unaware of that last, fearfully awaited gasp. + 

Her mother had risen. Isabel’s arm was still around her. Stephen’s hand was on Jane’s shoulder. She rose slowly from her chair, staring down at the white, pinched face that lay upon the pillow⁠—the face that was not her father’s. + 

“Come, dear,” said Stephen tenderly. At the sound of his voice Jane felt her eyes fill suddenly with tears. Her father was dead. Stephen’s hand was on her elbow. His touch grew firm and insistent. + 

“Come, dear,” he said again. He led her to the door. Robin and Isabel were already there. Her mother was weeping in their arms. + 

“Come, dear,” Robin was saying. Her father was dead, and they were all running away from him. In response to some strange, instinctive recoil, life was retreating from death. They were leaving him to Dr. Bancroft and Miss Coulter. + 

“I⁠—I want to stay!” cried Jane a little wildly. + 

“No, dear,” said Stephen protectively, “come.” Somehow, Jane found herself in the darkened hall. Her mother was at her elbow. + 

“Come, Mamma, dear,” Isabel was saying. + 

“He’s⁠—dead,” said Mrs. Ward dully. + 

“Come, dear,” said Isabel insistently, through her tears. + 

“I’ve⁠—no one⁠—now,” said Mrs. Ward slowly. + 

Jane suddenly realized that Minnie had joined them. Her face was distorted with weeping. + 

“You’ve got me,” said Minnie. Competently she drew Mrs. Ward from Isabel’s restraining arm. “You come and lie down in the guestroom,” she said. Mrs. Ward permitted herself to be led away. Jane, in the darkened corridor, looked blankly, tearlessly, at Stephen, Isabel, and Robin. Her father was dead. + 

IV + 

Jane sat in the sunny corner of Cicily’s room in the Lying-in Hospital, holding the week-old twins in her arms. How ridiculous, how adorable of them to be twins, she was thinking, as she gazed down at their absurdly red, absurdly wrinkled, absurdly tiny faces. Little John Ward and little Jane Ward Bridges! John and Jane⁠—Cicily’s son and daughter! + 

Jane had wondered, a trifle anxiously, if she would experience a pang at the sight of a grandchild⁠—if grandmother-hood had birth pangs of its own. But no⁠—she had produced her grand-twins, vicariously to be sure, without any spiritual travail. She loved being a grandmother. She loved little Jane, and especially little John Ward Bridges, little John Ward, who had come into the world to take up life and his name, just six weeks after his great-grandfather had left it. Life had gone on. + 

Jane wished, terribly, that her father might have lived to see this great-grandson. He so nearly had. Things happened so quickly as you grew older. Jane felt she had barely recovered from those three dreadful days when her father’s life was hanging in the balance, from the shock of his death, from the pity and sorrow of the readjustment of her mother’s life, when the hour arrived, at two o’clock one March morning, when, stealing out of bed and leaving a note for Stephen on her pincushion, she had rushed with Cicily in the motor from the Lakewood house to the Lying-in Hospital, where she had sat in a waiting-room, a beautifully furnished, green-walled waiting-room that looked exactly like the bleak parlour of an exceptionally good hotel, for six, eight, ten hours, waiting for Cicily’s twins to come into the world. + 

Cicily had been born in the house on Pine Street. Jenny and Steve in the blue bedroom at Lakewood. Jane did not entirely hold with hospitals as a stage set for birth. In spite of surgeon’s plaster labels stuck on newborn shoulder blades, in spite of scientific footprints taken in birth-rooms, Jane had been terribly afraid that the twins would be mixed up with someone else’s babies. Cicily had laughed at her. + 

Cicily had laughed at her, consistently, throughout the whole terrible ordeal of birth. Laughed at her as they stole from the Lakewood house with the elaborate precaution not to waken Stephen. Laughed at her in the motor in that hurried drive through the nocturnal boulevards, laughed at the sight of that beautifully furnished waiting-room, laughed even between ether gasps in her breathless struggle, the last few minutes before the twins had arrived. Laughed most of all, in the tranquillity of her narrow, ordered bed, as she lay with the newborn babies in her arms, and said, twinkling up at Jane’s joyful, relieved countenance: + 

“Well, if this is the curse of Eve, I don’t think so much of it! What have women been howling about down the ages? Why, it’s nothing⁠—it’s really nothing⁠—to go through for two babies!” + 

Jane had stood astounded at her courage. Her courage and her common sense⁠—the two great virtues of the rising generation. Freedom from sentimentality. Freedom from the old taboos that had shackled humanity for generations. Bravery and bravado⁠—they would take the rising generation far. + 

Cicily was lying, now, in the tranquillity of the ordered bed across the room from Jane. The room was a bower of flowers. Cicily was wearing a blue silk negligee that Muriel had sent her. Her lips were pale, but her eyes were bright and her dandelion head burned on the pillow like a yellow flame. She was holding a letter from Jack in her hands. + 

“I’m so happy, Mumsy,” she said. “He’ll be home in four weeks. Do you honestly think we can keep him from knowing it was twins until he gets here?” + 

“I honestly do,” smiled Jane. + 

“If Belle didn’t write Albert. She swears she didn’t.” + 

“I don’t believe she did,” smiled Jane. + 

“Poor Belle!” laughed Cicily. “She’s so envious of me⁠—with everything over.” + 

“It will be over for Belle next week,” smiled Jane. + 

“But it won’t be twins!” said Cicily proudly. “Not if there’s anything in the law of chances!” + 

“It probably won’t be twins,” smiled Jane. + 

“I’ve put it over Belle,” laughed Cicily, “all along the line. Jack’s twice as nice as Albert and my baby’s twice as many as hers!” + 

“Nevertheless,” said Jane, “I dare say Belle will continue to prefer her own husband and her own baby.” + 

“I suppose she will,” said Cicily, “but I prefer mine. Give them to me, Mumsy, before Miss Billings comes in. It’s almost time to nurse them.” + 

V + 

“Flora,” said Jane, “they’re the cutest things I ever saw! It was too dear of you to make them!” + 

“The last hats,” smiled Flora, “that I’ll ever make. I sold the goodwill of the shop today.” + 

“And you’re sailing Wednesday?” Jane passed the toast. She and Flora were having tea on the terrace. It was late in June. The first roses were beginning to bud. Flora had motored out for a farewell call. She had brought with her two little blue caps for the twins. + 

“Wednesday,” said Flora. “It nearly killed me, Jane, to close the house.” + 

“I know it did,” said Jane. + 

“I’m staying at the Blackstone,” said Flora. “The storage company took the furniture yesterday. I’ve sold the house to such a funny man⁠—his name’s Ed Brown. He’s a billboard king. He’s going to turn it into studios for his commercial artists.” + 

“I don’t see how you could do it,” said Jane. + 

“I wanted to do it,” said Flora. “I wanted to keep myself from ever coming back. I would have, you know, as long as the house was there. And yet I was miserable in it. You don’t know, Jane, how much I’ve missed Father.” + 

“Oh, yes, I do,” said Jane. + 

“At first, you know, I tried to keep busy with the hats and the war orphans. But I never saw the war orphans. And the hats⁠—Jane, it was the hats that made me realize that I was growing old.” + 

“But you’re not old!” cried Jane. Her protest was quite honest. Flora’s slim, fashionable figure seemed to her as young as ever. Her face had lost the blank and weary expression it had worn for the first years after her father’s death. In the sunlight of the terrace, the faint sheen of silver seemed only a highlight on her red-gold hair. + 

“I’m forty-three,” sighed Flora, “and I know I look it. I’ve known it from the moment I realized that I didn’t want to try on the hats any longer. At first I couldn’t wait to get them out of the boxes when they came from the customs-house. I used to put them all on and preen myself in front of the mirrors. But lately⁠—lately, Jane⁠—I didn’t seem to want to. At first I just said to myself that the new styles were trying. But pretty soon I knew⁠—I knew it was my face.” + 

“Flora!” cried Jane, in horror. “Don’t be ridiculous! You’re lovely looking. You always were!” + 

“You don’t understand, Jane,” said Flora accusingly. “You don’t care how you look. You never did.” + 

“I did, too!” cried Jane. “Of course, I know I never looked like much of anything⁠—” + 

“But you’re coming into your own, now, Jane,” said Flora, smiling. “The fourth decade is your home field. You’re going to spend the next ten years looking very happy and awfully amusing and pretty enough, while the beauties⁠—the beauties fade and frizzle or grow red and blowsy, and finally rot⁠—just rot and end up looking like exceptionally well-preserved corpses, fresh from the hand of a competent undertaker⁠—” Flora’s voice was really trembling. “So⁠—I’m going to Paris, Jane, where the undertakers are exceedingly competent and there’s some real life for middle-aged people. Here in Chicago what do I do but watch your children and Muriel’s and Isabel’s grow up and produce more children? It’s terrible, Jane, it’s really terrible⁠—” Again she broke off. “What are you and Isabel going to do with your mother?” + 

“She’s going on living in the old house with Minnie,” said Jane. “Of course, it’s dreadful there, now that the boulevard has gone through. Noisy and dirty and awfully commercial⁠—” + 

“And the elms all cut down,” said Flora sympathetically, “when they widened the street.” + 

“But Mamma likes it,” said Jane. “She likes the old house⁠—” + 

“And Isabel’s near her. She comes out here for the weekends. I don’t know what she’ll do when we go to Gull Rocks.” + 

“You’re going to Gull Rocks?” asked Flora. + 

“We have to,” said Jane. “We really have to, Stephen’s mother counts on it. And I’ve promised Cicily that she and Jack could have this house for the summer, while they’re deciding what to do. Stephen’s going to celebrate his fiftieth birthday by taking a two months’ vacation.” + 

“Why don’t you go abroad?” asked Flora. + 

“Stephen would rather sail that catboat,” smiled Jane. + 

“Jane, you’ve been a saint about Gull Rocks all these years,” said Flora earnestly. “I couldn’t stand it for a week.” + 

Yet Flora had stood Mr. Furness for twenty years, thought Jane. Stood that life, spent junketing about with a cribbage board in trains de luxe! Stood those expensive hotels in London and Paris and Rome and Madrid and Carlsbad and Biarritz and Dinard and Benares and Tokyo! + 

“You’ve been the saint, Flora!” said Jane. + 

As she spoke Molly appeared, pushing the double perambulator around the clump of evergreens at the foot of the garden. She paused beneath the apple tree, put on the brake, and sat down on the green bench. Molly was Cicily’s impeccable English nursemaid. She was infallible with the twins and very firm with Cicily. She liked Jane, however. + 

“Come and look at the babies,” said Jane. + 

The twins, very plump and pink and as alike as two pins, were blinking up at the June sunlight through the boughs of the apple tree. Molly had risen respectfully at Jane’s approach. She had beautiful British manners. + 

“Aren’t they funny?” said Flora. “They look so clean. And somehow so⁠—brand-new.” + 

“They are brand-new,” said Jane proudly. She stroked John Ward’s velvety cheek with a proprietary finger. He responded immediately with a vague, toothless, infinitely touching smile and a spasmodic gesture of his small pink-sweatered arms. + 

“Sometimes he has a dimple,” said Jane. + 

“They’re prettier than Belle’s little girl,” said Flora. “I hoped she was going to look like Muriel. But she doesn’t.” + 

“She looks like Belle,” said Jane. “Belle was a homely baby.” + 

“She’s lovely now,” said Flora. + 

“Oh, lovely,” said Jane. + 

“Cicily’s lovely, too,” said Flora. + 

“Yes,” said Jane. + 

“And so young,” said Flora wistfully. + 

“And so happy,” said Jane. “They’re both so happy since the boys came home.” + 

“Jane,” said Flora solemnly, as they turned to leave the garden, “do you find that looking at the younger generation makes you think of your own life?” + 

“Yes,” said Jane, a bit uncertainly. + 

“It makes me think of lost opportunities,” said Flora⁠—“chances that will never come again.” They strolled across the lawn for a moment in silence. Then Flora spoke once more, this time a trifle tremulously: “Do you know, Jane, that I’ve never been happy⁠—happy like that, I mean⁠—except for just the ten days that I was engaged to Inigo Fellowes.” + 

“I’m afraid,” said Jane slowly, as they ascended the terrace steps, “that no one’s ever happy like that for very long.” + 

“But for longer than ten days,” said Flora, still solemnly, “and maybe more than once. Inigo’s still very happy with his wife.” + 

“I didn’t know he had a wife,” said Jane. + 

“Oh, yes,” said Flora. “He’s been married for twelve years. I met him in Paris during the war, you know. He’d lost a leg and was being shipped back to Australia. He lives there now. He showed me a picture of his two sons.” + 

Jane wondered why Inigo had felt he had to do that. It seemed a bit unnecessary. Though Flora, no doubt, had been wonderful about them. + 

“You’ve had such a⁠—a normal life, Jane,” said Flora, as they ascended the terrace steps. “You’ve always been so happy with Stephen.” + 

“Yes,” said Jane evenly, “Stephen’s a darling.” + 

“And now you have the children⁠—to amuse you always.” + 

“Children,” said Jane doubtfully, “don’t always amuse you.” + 

“Don’t they?” said Flora. “I should think they would.” + 

“Well, they don’t,” said Jane. + 

She kissed Flora goodbye very tenderly in the front hall. She stood on the doorstep and watched her motor recede down the gravel path. The passing of Flora meant a great deal to Jane. She would miss her frightfully. Her oldest friend. Except Muriel, who was, of course, so much less⁠—less friendly. Not a friend like Agnes, of course. But Agnes was in New York. And now Flora would be in Paris. She might never see her again. With Stephen feeling the way he did about Gull Rocks, she might never go to Paris. Flora would meet André there. Flora would probably come to know André very well again⁠— + 

The striking of the clock in the hall behind her recalled Jane to a sense of the present. Six o’clock. Jenny ought to be home on the five-fifty. She was in town taking her College Entrance Board physics examination for Bryn Mawr. Jane was glad that she was going there. It had been hard to convince her that she should. Jenny cared very little for Bryn Mawr, but she cared even less for a social début. It was with the single idea of postponing that distressing event that Jenny had embraced the thought of a college education. Jenny was a girl’s girl, pure and simple. So unlike Cicily, who had always had a crowd of boys about the house⁠—But where was Cicily? She should be home that minute, nursing the twins. She was probably out on the golf links. Stephen and Jack would be back from the bank on the five-fifty. Jane had tried in vain to impress on Cicily the elementary fact that she ought to be home before Jack every evening. To precede your husband to the conjugal hearth at nightfall had always seemed to Jane the primary obligation of matrimony. But Cicily had said she should worry! Suddenly she whirled around the bushes at the entrance of the driveway in her little Ford roadster. Her hat was off and her yellow bob was blowing in the breeze. + 

“Just met Cousin Flora!” she called. She threw on her brakes. The Ford stopped in a whirl of gravel. Cicily sprang to the doorstep. “Is Jack home?” she cried. “Are the twins howling?” She was unbuttoning her blouse as she rushed into the hall. Jane followed her. + 

“Call Molly, will you, Mumsy? I’ve got to hurry! Gosh, Jack should be here! We’re dining in town, you know, this evening!” + 

Jane turned toward the living-room in quest of Molly. + 

“Cousin Flora told me about the bonnets!” called Cicily from the upper hall. “Bring them up, will you? I’ll look at them while I nurse the babies!” + 

The impeccable Molly had heard the Ford. She met Jane at the terrace doors. She had a twin tucked under each arm. + 

“I’m afraid Mrs. Bridges kept them waiting,” smiled Jane. + 

“Well⁠—you know how young mothers are, ma’am,” said Molly resignedly, and passed on through the living-room and up the stairs. + 

Jane was not sure she did know, half as well as Molly did. She closed the terrace doors to keep out the mosquitoes. Molly always left them open. Young mothers were rather perplexing to Jane. Cicily never worried about those babies and never watched over them. She left them entirely to Molly’s care. Molly did the watching and Jane did the worrying. Last week, for instance, when the supplementary bottle had not seemed to agree with little Jane, Molly had watched over formulas for hours and Jane had lain awake worrying for two whole nights. But Cicily had not been ruffled. + 

“It’s up to the doctor, Mumsy,” she said. “Babies always have their ups and downs. I can’t invent a formula.” + 

Courage and common sense, again, perhaps. Bravery and bravado. But it did seem a little heartless⁠— + 

The front door opened and Stephen and Jack and Jenny came in from the five-fifty. + 

“Jenny,” cried Jane, “how did the exam go?” + 

“Oh, all right,” said Jenny calmly; “but why should a girl know physics?” + 

Jack made a dive for the stairs. + 

“Golly!” he cried, “I’ve got to step on it! Where’s Cicily? Where are the kids?” + 

“In her room,” called Jane. She turned to smile at Stephen. + 

“That’s boy’s going to make a banker,” said Stephen proudly. + 

Jane slipped her arm around Jenny’s thin young shoulders. + 

“Do you really think you passed?” she inquired. + 

“Oh, I guess so,” said Jenny. She tossed her felt hat on the hall table and ran her hand through her straight blonde bob. Her plain little face was twinkling at her mother in an indulgent smile. “Don’t fuss, Mumsy!” + 

Just then little Steve burst in at the front door. He looked flushed and excited and just a trifle mussy in grass-stained flannels. Tennis racket in hand he towered lankily over Jane. + 

“Mumsy, can we have dinner early? Can we have it at half-past six?” + 

“I don’t think so,” said Jane, with a glance at the clock and a thought for the menu. Her eyes returned to her son. His blond, boyish beauty always made her heart beat a little faster. At fifteen he looked so much like Stephen⁠—the young Stephen that Jane had met in Flora’s ballroom. “Why?” + 

“Well, because I promised Buzzy Barker that I’d take her to the seven-thirty movie. I said I’d be there in the car at seven-fifteen. I can’t keep Buzzy waiting, Mumsy. I absolutely can’t! If we can’t have dinner early, I’ll have to go without it, but I’ve been playing tennis all afternoon, and I think when a man comes home tired at night and says he’d like to have dinner early⁠—” + 

Jane, Stephen, and Jenny burst simultaneously into laughter. + 

“Go vamp the cook, Steve,” said Jenny unsympathetically. “You’re a devil with women!” + 

Steve vanished, with a contemptuous snort in the direction of the pantry. + 

“He’s awful, Mumsy,” continued Jenny. “And Buzzy Barker is the arch-petter of her generation.” + 

“You’re all awful,” smiled Stephen, as he entered the living-room. “I don’t know how your mother puts up with you.” + 

Jane slipped her arm through his. + 

“Come out and look at the roses,” she said, “they’re lovely this time of day.” + 

Somehow it seemed to her at the moment that she put up with them all very easily. She had a normal life and children did amuse you! Arm in arm with Stephen she strolled across the terrace in the early evening air. A faint damp breeze was stealing in from the west⁠—the very breath of the swamps. An amber sunset light was flooding the Skokie Valley. It turned the terrace turf a vivid yellow green. It intensified the kaleidoscopic colours of the flower border. The roses looked redder and pinker than they did at high noon. Jane was thinking of defrauded Flora. She was wondering why she, herself, was ever discouraged about life. When she had Stephen and three funny children and two ridiculous grand-twins⁠— + 

“Do you remember the swamp this garden was sixteen years ago?” said Stephen suddenly. + 

Jane nodded solemnly. + 

“It was under this apple tree,” she said, “that I told you that I knew Steve was going to be a boy. And you kissed me, Stephen⁠—” + 

“I’ll kiss you again,” said Stephen handsomely, suiting the action to the words. + 

“Mumsy!” shrieked Steve from the pantry window. “Stop necking with Dad! Lena says we can have dinner at six-thirty! I absolutely can’t keep Buzzy waiting, Mumsy⁠—” + 

Jane slipped from Stephen’s arms. + 

“Come in and eat and keep him quiet,” she said tranquilly. Still arm in arm, they strolled back across the terrace. As they entered the living-room, Cicily’s voice was floating down the stairs. + 

“Where are those bonnets of Cousin Flora’s, Mumsy?” + 

“Jane,” said Stephen cheerfully, sinking into his armchair and opening the Evening Post, “this house is Bedlam.” + 

“I like it Bedlam,” said Jane, smiling. She picked up Flora’s bonnets from the living-room table and started with them toward the door. On the threshold she ran into Steve. + 

“Golly, Dad!” he was crying, aghast. “Don’t start to read the paper before dinner! I absolutely can’t keep Buzzy waiting⁠—” + 

Jane walked slowly up the stairs, smoothing out the frilly ruffles of Flora’s little blue bonnets. She could still hear Steve arguing incoherently with his father in the living-room. + 

On the first landing she caught the great guffaw of Jack’s laughter as he played with the twins on Cicily’s bed. Jenny was singing to the accompaniment of running water in the bathroom off her bedroom at the head of the stairs. + 

“Yes, sir, she’s my baby! + 

Tra-la⁠—I don’t mean maybe!” + 

Ignoring her brother’s views on early dinner, Jenny was obviously taking a tub. She had not bothered to close any doors. + 

There was nothing more satisfactory, thought Jane, as she knocked lightly at Cicily’s threshold, than a large, quarrelsome, and united family. + 

“Mumsy!” shouted Steve from the lower hall. “Dinner’s served!” + 

“Come in!” called Cicily shrilly, over Jack’s laughter. + 

“Jenny!” shouted Steve. “Come on down! Dinner’s ready!” + 

“Oh, shut up, Romeo!” shrieked Jenny affably, over the sound of running water. + 

Jane smiled indulgently as she opened Cicily’s door. There was a comfortable domestic sense of reassurance about a house that was Bedlam. Bedlam was exactly the kind of a house she liked. + 

VI + 

Jane sat on the brick parapet of her little terrace, wondering if the soft October air was too cool for her mother. It was a lovely autumn afternoon. An Indian summer haze hung over the tanned stretch of the Skokie Valley. The leaves of the oak trees were wine-red. A few scattered clumps of marigolds and zinnias that had withstood the early frost still splashed the withered flower border with patches of orange and rose. + 

Isabel and Robin had motored Mrs. Ward out for Sunday luncheon at Lakewood, and the sun was so warm and the terrace so sheltered and the last breath of summer so precious that Jane had suggested that they take their after-luncheon coffee in the open air. Mrs. Ward sat, her small black-garbed figure wrapped in the folds of a white Shetland shawl, sipping the hot liquid a shade gratefully. She was warming her thin, ringed hands on the outside of the little cup. + 

“Cold, Mamma?” asked Jane. “That shawl’s not very thick.” + 

“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Ward tartly. “I’m never cold.” + 

Jane’s eyes met Isabel’s. They were always incredibly touched by their mother’s perpetual, proud refusal to admit the infirmities of age. Infirmities that had seemed to creep insidiously upon her since her husband’s death, eight months before. That death had vividly emphasized for Jane and Isabel the menace of the years. + 

Robin and Stephen were casually dressed in tan tweeds for a country weekend. The three women were still in mourning. Their crude, black figures stood out uncompromisingly against the soft russet background of the October garden. The sombre badge of grief seemed to draw them closer together, to emphasize the family unit and their common loss. Nevertheless, it was still impossible for Jane to realize that her father was dead. That he would never again make one of the little group that was gathered that sunny afternoon on her terrace. Never again meet her eyes with his indulgent twinkle, half-veiled in cigar smoke, as Isabel and her mother rattled off their brittle, shameless, incisive comment on life. Never again help solve a family problem, like the one now under discussion. Isabel was discussing it, very incisively. + 

“I hate,” she said, “to have him give up his engineering.” + 

“He wants to give it up,” said Stephen eagerly. + 

“Not really,” said Isabel; “he just thinks he ought to. I wish he could go to Tech this winter. Cicily could take a little flat in Boston.” + 

“My dear,” said Robin seriously, “Jack ought to support his wife.” + 

“He’s only twenty-three,” sighed Isabel. + 

“He oughtn’t to have a wife,” put in Mrs. Ward, again rather tartly, “at his age.” + 

“But he has,” said Robin, “and he ought to support her.” + 

“He’s planned on engineering since he was a little boy,” said Isabel plaintively. “You know, Jane, I think it’s really up to Cicily. If she told him she’d like to live in Boston⁠—” + 

“I know,” said Jane, “but Cicily wouldn’t like to live in Boston. She’d like to buy that four-acre lot and build a little French farmhouse and live here in Lakewood while Jack worked in Stephen’s bank.” + 

“He’s awfully good in the bank,” said Stephen. + 

Isabel rose impatiently from her chair and walked across the terrace. She stared a moment in silence at the tanned stretch of meadow. + 

“He’s good at anything,” she said presently. Jane caught the sob that was trembling in her voice. “But he ought to have his chance.” + 

“I think myself,” said Jane seriously, “that Cicily’s making a mistake. But you know how it is, Isabel. She likes Lakewood. She’s made all her plans. She doesn’t want to go into exile.” + 

“Boston isn’t exile!” said Isabel, turning back to her chair. + 

“Thank you, Isabel!” threw in Stephen parenthetically. + 

“But Cicily thinks it is,” said Jane. “She’s never liked the Bostonians she met at Gull Rocks⁠—” + 

“I know how she feels,” said Robin generously. “No woman wants a husband who’s still in school. Besides, Isabel can’t support them. I mean⁠—we couldn’t give Cicily the things she’s accustomed to have. Jack made his decision when he married. He has a wife and two children. He can’t settle back on his father-in-law for a meal ticket. Stephen’s very generous to offer to build them that house and to give him such a good job in the bank.” + 

“I’m glad to have him there,” said Stephen warmly. “He’s a bright kid.” + 

“Just the same,” said Isabel, “Jack’s been building bridges since the age of ten. I can see him now with his first set of Meccano! He’ll be awfully bored with banking! He’ll never really like it.” + 

“Isabel,” said Mrs. Ward reprovingly, “you shouldn’t talk like that about banking.” Mrs. Ward had a solid Victorian respect for the source of her younger son-in-law’s income. Her remark was ignored, however. In the heat of family discussion, Jane reflected, it was becoming increasingly customary to ignore Mrs. Ward. + 

“He’ll like Cicily,” said Robin, “and the twins and the little French farmhouse. He’ll like the fun of starting out in life, on his own. He’ll like himself if he’s holding down an honest job.” + 

“Of course, I can understand,” said Isabel, “that Jane would like to have Cicily near her, now Steve’s at Hilton and Jenny’s in Bryn Mawr. I hate to give up Belle. But if it’s for Albert’s best good⁠—” + 

“How’s Jenny getting on?” inquired Robin abruptly. He had always admired his plain little niece. + 

“She loves it,” smiled Jane. And Jenny really did. Her unexpected enthusiasm for the cloisters had made Jane very happy. “She’s rooming in Pembroke with Barbara Belmont⁠—you know, the daughter of Stephen’s friend.” + 

“Really?” said Isabel, a trifle incredulously. “Belmont, the banker?” At heart, Jane knew, Isabel shared her mother’s Victorian confidence in banks. + 

“Yes,” said Jane. “He was in Stephen’s class at Harvard.” + 

“Such nice girls go to college nowadays,” mused Isabel. The note of incredulity still lingered in her voice. “Your friends were so queer, Jane.” + 

“They certainly were,” put in Mrs. Ward with a sigh. + 

A little flame of adolescent resentment flashed up in Jane’s heart. She felt as if she were fourteen once more and had just bumped up against one of Isabel’s and her mother’s “opinions.” At forty-two, however, resentment was articulate. + 

“I don’t know what was queer about them,” she said indignantly, “unless it was queer of them to be so very able. Agnes is one of the most successful dramatists on Broadway. Her new crime play’s a wow. And Marion Park has just been appointed Dean of Radcliffe.” + 

“Well, I never knew Marion Park,” said Isabel doubtfully. + 

“But certainly no one would ever have expected Agnes Johnson to amount to anything,” said Mrs. Ward. + 

As she spoke, the door to the living-room opened and Cicily came out on the terrace. She was wearing a little green sport suit and carrying a roll of blueprints in her hand. She shook her dandelion head and smiled charmingly at the assembled family. + 

“Oh, here you are!” she said pleasantly. “Isn’t it too cold for Granny? I want to show Uncle Robin the last plans for the house.” Unrolling a blueprint, she dropped down on her knees by his chair. Cicily still looked about fourteen years old, reflected Jane, tenderly. “We want to get it started before the ground freezes⁠—” she began. Looking up, she met her mother-in-law’s inimical eye. Something a little hard and indomitable glittered in Cicily’s own. She did not look fourteen years old any longer. “Oh, don’t tell me you’ve been arguing about it all over again!” she cried mutinously. + 

“My dear,” said Jane, “it’s not a thing to be lightly decided.” + 

“Who’s deciding it lightly?” cried Cicily hotly. “Mumsy, you make me tired.” + 

“Don’t talk like that, Cicily!” put in Mrs. Ward, and was again ignored. + 

“Aunt Isabel makes me tired!” continued Cicily. “I get so sick of all this family discussion! You act exactly as if I didn’t know what was good for Jack, myself! I’m his wife! I ought to know him by this time!” + 

“Cicily!” said Stephen warningly. + 

“Well, I do know him, Dad!” flashed Cicily, “and I’m acting for his best good! Where would engineering get him? Three years at Tech and then building bridges and tunnels and railroad embankments at some jumping-off place all the rest of his life! Me, boarding in construction camps with Molly and the twins! Not even with Molly! She wouldn’t go! What do we live for, anyway? He’s much better off in your bank, leading a civilized life in a city where everyone knows him!” + 

“Belle didn’t talk like that,” said Isabel reprovingly, “when Albert decided to go to Oxford.” + 

“Well, I shouldn’t think she would!” flashed Cicily again. “Oxford University isn’t Boston Tech! Aunt Muriel’s going to rent them a beautiful little house in that lovely country and Belle will meet a lot of distinguished people! I think Belle’s life is going to be perfectly grand! If Albert really does go into the diplomatic service. Belle will have a career! She may end up in the Court of Saint James! I’d love to be an ambassador’s lady⁠—” + 

“Albert’s not an ambassador yet, Cicily,” twinkled Stephen; “he’s just succeeded with some difficulty in becoming an Oxford undergraduate.” + 

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Cicily. “I wish to goodness Jack had his ambition.” + 

“Jack has his own ambitions,” said Stephen quietly. + 

“He certainly has!” retorted Cicily, “and he ought to be protected from them! You can’t tell me anything about Jack, Dad! I think he’s just as sweet as you do. He’s worth ten of Albert! But just the same he’ll never get anywhere if I don’t push him. I’m pushing him now, just as hard as I can, into your bank! It’s a splendid opening!” She paused a trifle breathlessly, then smiled very sweetly at her father. “You know you think so yourself, Dad, darling.” + 

Jane watched Stephen try to steel himself against that smile, then reluctantly succumb to it. + 

“I wouldn’t offer Jack anything, Isabel,” he said slowly, “that I didn’t think was going to turn into a pretty good thing.” + 

“There!” cried Cicily in triumph, “and our house is going to be perfectly ducky⁠—” + 

“Cicily⁠—” began Isabel portentously. Then even Isabel obviously saw that argument was a waste of breath. “Let me see the blueprints,” she said helplessly. + 

Cicily surrendered them with a forgiving smile. She rose and looked interestedly over her mother-in-law’s shoulder. + 

“Do you think the linen closet is large enough?” she asked tactfully. + 

“No, I don’t,” said Isabel judicially, “and it ought to be nearer the clothes chute.” + 

“I’ll have it changed,” said Cicily generously. It was the generosity of the victor. + 

Jane rose slowly from her seat on the parapet. She could not do anything about Cicily. She could, however, go into the house and bring out Stephen’s overcoat to wrap around her mother. As she walked across the terrace, she could see Isabel bending interestedly over the blueprints! Poor old Isabel! It was quite obvious that she had laid down her arms. + 

III + 

I + 

Jane stood by the piano in the Lakewood living-room, looking fixedly at the flowers that the children had sent her. Fifty Killarney roses in a great glass bowl. Time was when Jane had regarded a woman of fifty as standing with one foot in the grave. Even now she was glad that Isabel was coming out for tea. Isabel was fifty-five. Jane felt that it would be a comfort to look at her. It had been a comfort that morning to look at Stephen, who was fifty-eight. But men were different. To men, years brought distinction. To women, they brought only grey hairs and crow’s-feet, thick waistlines and double chins. + 

Jane turned from the roses to glance at her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror that hung over her Colonial mantelpiece. Jane’s waistline was nothing to be ashamed of. She had no crow’s-feet. When she remembered to hold her head high, her chin, if slightly⁠—well⁠—mature, was certainly not double. It could not be denied, however, that her hair was very grey. Jane hated that. What had Jimmy once said? “A woman is young as long as she looks beguiling with mussy hair.” Jane looked like the Witch of Endor, now, with mussy hair. Still, she reflected courageously, she never allowed it to be mussy. “Well-groomed”⁠—that was the adjective a well-intentioned eulogist would have chosen with which to describe Jane’s hair at fifty. A barren adjective. An adjective devoid of glamour and romance. Well-groomed hair, Jane reflected sadly, would never have appealed to Jimmy. + 

Did it appeal to Stephen? Jane smiled a little fondly at the thought. Stephen, she knew, had never even observed her increasingly meticulous arrangement of hairnet and hairpin. To Stephen, Jane still looked like Jane, and, though she had ceased to be the phantom of delight that he had married, in Stephen’s eyes Jane could never be fifty. And yet⁠—she was. There were the smiling flowers to prove it. + 

Jane turned resolutely from the mirror. A woman of character on her fiftieth birthday, she told herself firmly, should not be staring despondently into a gilt-framed looking-glass regretting her vanished charms. A woman of character on her fiftieth birthday should have put vanity behind her. She should be competently and confidently taking stock of the more durable satisfactions of life. + 

There were plenty of them to take stock of, Jane reflected. Durable satisfactions were the kind she had gone in for. From her earliest girlhood some unerring instinct of emotional thrift had led her to select them at life’s bargain counter. They had worn well. They had washed splendidly. They had not stretched nor shrunk nor faded. They were all nearly as good as new. They were, perhaps, Jane reminded herself, with a smile, a little out of fashion. Durable satisfactions were not in vogue any longer. Cicily professed to think nothing of them. But at fifty Jane could spread them all out before her and take solid Victorian comfort in the fact that there was not a shred of tarnished tinsel among them. No foolish purchases to regret. Only a very fortunate, a very happy woman could say that, Jane reflected wisely. + 

And yet⁠—and yet⁠—what wanton instinct whispered that a moment of divine extravagance would be rather glamorous to look back upon? That at fifty it would be cheering to remember having purchased⁠—oh, long ago, of course⁠—something superbly silly that you had loved and paid high for and⁠—But no, Jane’s thoughts continued, if you had done that you would also have to remember that you had tired of it or worn it out or broken it in some deplorable revulsion of feeling. It was much better to have gone in for the satisfactions that endured. Satisfactions that endured like the familiar furniture of the Lakewood living-room. Jane’s eyes surveyed the objects around her with a whimsical twinkle⁠—the books, the Steinway, Stephen’s armchair, her own sewing-table, tangible reminders of the solidity of her life. The very walls were eloquent of domesticity. The serenity of the pleasant, ordered room was very reassuring. It reminded her that she had nothing to worry about in her pleasant, ordered life. + 

The children, of course. You always worried about your children. Even about good children like Cicily, Jenny, and Steve. You worried about Cicily because she smoked too much and drank a little and played bridge for too high stakes and seemed a trifle moody⁠—too reckless one day, too resigned the next. A curious mixture, at twenty-eight, of daring and domesticity. You worried about Jenny because she did not really like the life in Lakewood, because she did not care for dances and was not interested in any particular young man, and talked absurd nonsense about leaving home and taking a job and leading her own life. Jenny was twenty-five. She really should be falling in love with someone. You worried about Steve because⁠—but of course that was only ridiculous! At twenty-three Steve was proving himself a chip off the old block. He was a most enthusiastic young banker. Stephen was delighted with him and Jane was delighted with Stephen’s delight. She would not admit, even to herself, a certain perverse disappointment that her handsome young son, with the world at his feet and so full of a number of things, had embraced the prosaic career of a banker with such ardent abandon. It was nice, it was natural, she told herself firmly, that Steve should follow in his father’s and his grandfather’s footsteps. It was absurd of her to wish him a little more⁠—adventurous. A little less conventional. A bit of a gypsy. + 

A gypsy. Jane had only known one gypsy. If she had run off with Jimmy and they had had a son⁠—Jane pulled herself up abruptly. These were no thoughts for Mrs. Stephen Carver to be indulging herself in as she stood staring at the great glass bowl of Killarney roses that her three grown children had sent her on her fiftieth birthday. There was nothing in Steve to criticize, of course, save a certain youthful scorn for his Middle-Western environment, engendered by his education on the Atlantic seaboard. Three years at Milton and four at Harvard had transformed Steve into an ardent Bostonian. He had wanted to settle there and go into his grandfather’s bank. His uncle Alden had encouraged the thought. But Stephen had felt that Chicago offered greater opportunities. Stephen had been for seven years the president of the Midland Loan and Trust Company. He had seated his only son, very firmly, on a high stool in his outer office. + 

Jane heard the doorbell. That would be Isabel. She turned from the roses as her sister entered. Isabel was well-groomed, too, Jane noticed with a sigh. Well-groomed and portly, with a stole of silver fox thrown around her substantial blue broadcloth shoulders and a smart little black hat pulled unbecomingly down over her worn round face, uncompromisingly concealing the soft waves of her silvery hair. Modern styles were made for the young, Jane reflected. + 

“Happy birthday!” said Isabel as she kissed her. + 

Jane acknowledged the ironic salute. + 

“You won’t mind any other, you know,” smiled Isabel, “until the sixtieth.” + 

“I don’t mind this one,” said Jane stoutly. + 

“Tell that to the marines!” laughed Isabel. “I’ll never forget Muriel’s! Wasn’t she down?” + 

“She certainly was,” smiled Jane, “in spite of the celebration.” + 

Muriel’s fiftieth birthday had occurred last month. She had celebrated it by taking off her mourning for Bert. He had been dead two years. + 

“Muriel’s gone off awfully,” sighed Isabel. It was rather a sigh of satisfaction, however. “She’s reverting to race as she gets older.” + 

“It was a mistake,” said Jane, “for her to bob her hair.” + 

“It certainly was,” said Isabel. She threw off her fox fur and sank down in Stephen’s armchair. “Do you know that she’s been seeing an awful lot of Ed Brown?” + 

“I know,” said Jane, “and I can’t understand it. I can’t even understand how she came to know him. He’s very unattractive.” + 

Isabel, as usual, could supply all required details. + 

“He gave her twenty-five thousand dollars in her campaign for the Crippled Children. She went to see him in Flora’s old house. He’s turned the gold parlour into his private office.” + 

A little shiver of repulsion passed over Jane. + 

“Don’t, Isabel!” she cried. “I can’t bear to think of it!” + 

“Can you?” said Isabel. “But he has. I suppose he was bowled over by the sight of Mrs. Albert Lancaster in the flesh! He’s just the kind that would read all the society columns. Anyway, he drew out his checkbook with a flourish and that gesture made a great hit with Muriel.” + 

“He must be as old as Bert Lancaster was,” mused Jane. + 

“Oh, no, dear,” said Isabel promptly. “Bert was sixty-seven when he died. Ed Brown can’t be a day over sixty.” + 

“Well, anyway,” said Jane, “it won’t come to anything.” + 

“Rosalie’s not so sure,” said Isabel. “He has millions. Bert’s illness was awfully expensive, you know. And Muriel’s been generous to Albert.” + 

“Oh, Isabel!” said Jane defensively. “That won’t make any difference! Whatever you may say against Muriel, she never cared about money. All Muriel ever wanted in life was excitement and admiration and⁠—” + 

“And love,” interrupted Isabel, with decision. “Ed Brown could love her. Any man can do that. He could love her in an opera box and a Rolls-Royce town-car and a sable cape! I think Muriel would enjoy it immensely.” + 

“A billboard king,” said Jane reflectively. “I don’t just see Muriel Lancaster as a billboard queen.” + 

“He’s the president of the Watseka Country Club,” said Isabel with a twinkle. “But I think Muriel could be relied on to make him resign. He couldn’t resign from his married daughters, however. I should think Pearl and Gertie would give Muriel pause for thought.” + 

Isabel’s command of facts was really astounding. + 

“Are those their names?” + 

Isabel nodded solemnly. + 

“They’re terrible, Jane. They play bridge in the afternoons in lace evening gowns and they wear white fox furs in streetcars! At home, I’m sure they have flats with sun parlours and sit in them in boudoir caps, reading the comic supplements of the Sunday papers⁠—” + 

“Isabel!” laughed Jane. “You’re simply morbid!” + 

“Merely clairvoyante,” smiled Isabel. “But I tell you, Jane, since Bert died, curiously enough, Muriel’s been rather lonely. She couldn’t talk to him, of course. But as long as he lived she had to plan for him and quarrel with his nurses and argue with his doctors. It gave her something to do.” + 

Just then the maid entered the room, bearing the tea-tray. Isabel, pausing discreetly, glanced up at her, just as Mrs. Ward used to glance at Minnie. + 

“Where’s Jenny?” she asked, on just her mother’s note of hollow inquiry, as Jane poured the water on the tea leaves. + 

“Out walking with her dogs,” said Jane. + 

The maid left the room and Isabel promptly resumed. + 

“It’s fun to flirt, you know, when you haven’t much time for it. But you can’t make a life out of philandering. Not even if you’re Muriel. Especially at fifty.” + 

“Two lumps?” said Jane. + 

“Two lumps,” said Isabel. “And lots of cream.” She rose to pick up her cup and stood silently on the hearthrug for a moment, absently stirring her tea. “You know, Jane,” she resumed presently, “it’s a little difficult, from fifty on, to decide just what you will make a life out of. And speaking of that, old girl, what are we going to do about Mamma? She says she won’t go away for the summer.” + 

“She must,” said Jane firmly, as she offered the toast. + 

“Well, she won’t,” said Isabel, accepting a piece. “She won’t because of Minnie’s asthma. Minnie has every kind of asthma there is⁠—horse, rose, and goldenrod! Mamma says Minnie must stay in town. Or Minnie says Mamma must. It’s too ridiculous, but I can’t do a thing with her! We ought to have got rid of Minnie years ago, Jane. She rules Mamma with a rod of iron.” + 

“We’re lucky to have her,” said Jane. “Mamma adores her and she takes very good care of her.” + 

“We could take care of her,” said Isabel. + 

“Could we?” said Jane. “I mean⁠—you know, Isabel⁠—would we? Mamma’s awfully trying. Just as trying as Minnie, really. Minnie’s the only person in the world who can manage her.” + 

“It’s dreadful,” said Isabel, “to think of Mamma being managed by a servant. When you remember how she used to be⁠—so pretty and proud and decided.” + 

“She’s a very old lady now,” said Jane. “A very lonely old lady.” + 

“Jane,” said Isabel solemnly, “when you see me getting like that, I hope you’ll kill me.” + 

“We’ll kill each other,” smiled Jane. “Let’s make a suicide pact.” + 

“I mean it,” said Isabel. + 

“So do I,” said Jane. “We’ll jump off the Michigan Boulevard Bridge together.” The thought had really caught Jane’s fancy. “Some early spring afternoon, I think, Isabel, when the ice is just out of the river and the first seagulls have come and the water’s running very clear and green. We’ll climb up on the parapet together⁠—which will be difficult as we’ll both be a little infirm⁠—and take a last look down the boulevard, thinking of how it was once just Pine Street. We’ll shut our eyes and remember the old square houses and the wide green yards and the elm trees, meeting over the cedar-block pavement. We’ll remember the yellow ice wagons, Isabel, and the Furnesses’ four-in-hand, and the bicycles and the hurdy-gurdies and our front steps on summer evenings. And then we’ll take hands and say ‘Out, brief candle!’ and jump! It would make a nine days’ wonder and the front page of all the newspapers, but I think it would be worth it!” + 

“It would be worth it to Cicily and Belle and Jenny,” said Isabel cynically. “They wouldn’t have to cope with anything worse than a double funeral!” + 

“To Cicily and Jenny, perhaps,” assented Jane. “Belle won’t have to cope with much if Albert stays in the diplomatic service and keeps the ocean between you.” + 

“I hope he won’t stay in it,” said Isabel. “He’s got as far up now as he can ever get without a great deal more money. You need millions, Jane, for even a second-rate embassy. Belle’s awfully tired of being the wife of an undersecretary and having a different baby in a new city every third year. I hope to goodness if she ever has another it will be a son! Three daughters in nine years is enough for Belle to handle!” + 

“A boy in time saves nine!” smiled Jane. As she spoke she heard the doorbell. “That’s probably Cicily,” she said. “She was going to bring over the children.” + 

In a moment, however, Muriel’s voice was heard in the hall. + 

“Is Mrs. Carver at home?” She appeared in the doorway, holding a little package in her hands. Muriel hadn’t gone off much, reflected Jane. She was looking very charming, that afternoon, in a new grey spring suit and a little red hat that matched the colour of her carmined lips. Her blue eyes were twinkling, as of old. There was a spirit of youth about Muriel that the frosts of fifty winters could not subdue. It triumphed over the ripe effulgence of her middle years. She looked well-groomed, however. + 

“How’s the birthday girl?” she cried. “Hello, Isabel!” Advancing to the hearthrug she kissed Jane warmly. “Feeling rather low, old speed?” + 

“Not at all,” said Jane falsely. “I like to be fifty.” + 

“I believe you,” said Muriel. “It’s a lovely age. ‘The last of life, for which the first was made!’ How poets do lie! Never mind, darling, you’ll feel better tomorrow. One gets used to everything!” She sank into an armchair and smiled up at Jane. “Here’s a present for you!” + 

Jane opened the little package. It contained a gold vanity case. + 

“Why, Muriel!” she cried. “How⁠—how magnificent!” + 

“Use that lipstick,” said Muriel firmly. “Better and brighter lipsticks are the answer, Jane. No tea, darling! Such as it is, I’m trying to keep my figure! Do you see what I see, Jane? Is Isabel actually eating chocolate cake?” + 

“I certainly am,” said Isabel, a bit tartly. + 

“I can’t have eaten a piece of chocolate cake,” said Muriel meditatively, “for over fifteen years! But you eat it, Jane, and you don’t get fat at all. Neither does Flora. I saw her in Paris last spring, just stuffing down patisserie at Rumpelmayer’s, and she was a perfect thirty-six!” + 

“You’re looking very pretty today, Muriel,” said Isabel suddenly. Her tone was not that of idle compliment. Rather of acute appraisal. She had been watching Muriel intently since her triumphal entrance. + 

Muriel glanced quickly up at her. Jane heard her catch her breath in a little excited gasp. + 

“I⁠—I’m feeling rather pretty,” she said surprisingly. “Do you know what I mean, girls⁠—how you do sometimes feel pretty, from the inside out?” + 

Jane nodded solemnly. She understood. Though she herself had not felt pretty in just that way for years. Not since that last night when she had gone with Jimmy into the moonlit garden. It was such a happy, excited feeling. And it always told its story in your face. You only felt pretty, Jane reflected wisely, when you knew that someone else, whose opinion you cared about terribly, really thought you were. + 

“Muriel!” cried Isabel. “What’s the matter with you?” + 

Jane suddenly realized that Muriel was laughing. Laughing happily, excitedly, and yet a trifle shyly. There was something absurdly virginal about that happy, excited laughter. She clasped her gloved hands impulsively in a little confiding gesture that recalled to Jane’s memory the Muriel of Miss Milgrim’s School. + 

“Girls,” she said dramatically, “I’m going to marry Ed Brown on the first of June!” + 

“M-Muriel!” stammered Jane. She rose to her feet. She did not dare to look at Isabel. + 

“I’m⁠—terribly happy,” said Muriel faintly. She had stopped laughing now. There were actually tears in her great blue eyes. Her carmined lips were trembling. The sudden display of emotion had curiously shattered the hard enamel of her brilliant, fading beauty. Jane took her in her arms. Muriel had never seemed more appealing. Jane felt terribly fond of her. She wanted to protect her from Isabel. From Isabel, who, quite unmoved, was still watching Muriel with that look of acute appraisal. Nevertheless, Jane, herself, could not suppress the thought that Muriel’s ample, corseted figure felt very solid, very mature in her eager embrace. She despised herself for the thought. + 

“Muriel,” she said, “I think it’s lovely.” + 

“I know I’m ridiculous,” said Muriel, withdrawing from her arms and fumbling for a handkerchief in her little grey bag. “But it’s terribly cheering to be really ridiculous again. I⁠—I was never very happy with Bert, you know. Ed really loves me. He⁠—he’s like a boy about me⁠—” Meeting Isabel’s appraising eye she stopped abashed. “I know you’re thinking there’s no fool like an old fool, Isabel!” + 

“I’m not!” protested Isabel. “I’m not at all. I’m sure you’ll be very happy⁠—” Her voice trailed off a trifle lamely. + 

“We’re going around the world on our honeymoon,” said Muriel. “We won’t be back for a year.” + 

A honeymoon, thought Jane. A honeymoon for Muriel, who was her own contemporary. It was absurd, of course, but it was touching, too. It was touching to think that anyone could have the courage to believe that life could begin over again at fifty. Love at fifty. It tired Jane to think of it. But perhaps it was possible. Autumn blossoming. A freak of nature, like the flowers of the witch-hazel, bursting weirdly into bloom in October when all the other bushes were bare. But⁠—Ed Brown. + 

“Have you written Albert?” asked Isabel. + 

“I cabled him Saturday,” said Muriel, The familiar glint of shameless curiosity glittered in Isabel’s eye. “He was very much pleased,” said Muriel with dignity. + 

“Of course,” said Jane hastily. “Why wouldn’t he be?” + 

“Will he come back for the wedding?” asked Isabel suddenly. “Will he bring Belle?” + 

“They’re both coming,” said Muriel, smiling. “And bringing the children.” + 

“You should have them for flower girls,” said Isabel wickedly. + 

“Ed has grandchildren, too,” said Muriel blandly. Jane felt the spectral presences of Pearl and Gertie hover for an instant in the circumambient air. But Isabel, thank Heaven, was obviously not going to refer to them. “I’m going to have such fun, Jane,” went on Muriel, “buying a trousseau. I’m going to be very foolish. I’m going in for black chiffon nightgowns and I saw a negligee last week at Castberg’s⁠—” + 

A sudden shuffle, a sound of suppressed laughter, broke in upon their colloquy from the hall. Jane looked up quickly. She had not heard the doorbell ring. A tiny red-sweatered figure stood, tottering, in the doorway. + 

“Happy birfday, Granma!” it cried and staggering across the room fell tottering across Jane’s knees. It was Robin Redbreast, her youngest grandchild. + 

“Magnificent!” cried Cicily’s voice. + 

The twins appeared in the doorway. Tripping on rugs, slipping on the hardwood floor, they dashed across the living-room and cast themselves on Jane’s neck. + 

“Happy birthday, Grandma!” they repeated. + 

Cicily stood on the threshold. She looked extremely pretty in a rose-coloured sport suit and immensely amused at her offspring’s dramatic entrance. + 

“Hello, Mumsy!” she cried. “Happy birthday again! Hello, Aunt Isabel! I thought you’d be here. How do you do, Aunt Muriel?” + 

“Don’t tell her,” whispered Muriel. “Don’t tell her until I’ve gone.” She rose as she spoke. Untangling herself from the arms of grandchildren, Jane walked with her to the door. + 

“I do feel a little silly,” confessed Muriel in the hall, “in the presence of Albert’s contemporaries.” + 

“Nonsense!” said Jane stoutly. Though she could not imagine what her own feelings would be if she had to announce her prospective marriage to Cicily. She kissed Muriel tenderly and returned to the living-room. Isabel had wasted no time. Cicily, standing on the hearthrug, was facing her mother-in-law in shocked, derisive incredulity. + 

“Oh, I don’t believe it!” she was saying. + 

“It’s true!” cried Isabel. “It’s perfectly true!” + 

“You’re kidding me,” said Cicily. + 

“I’m not!” cried Isabel. “Ask your mother!” + 

“It’s true,” said Jane soberly. + 

“Aunt Muriel⁠—is going to marry⁠—Ed Brown?” + 

Jane nodded solemnly. + 

“My Gawd!” said Cicily profanely. Then, “How absurd!” + 

“Why is it absurd?” inquired Jane a trifle sharply. She sat down again at the tea-table and removed Robin Redbreast’s fingers from the sugar-bowl. + 

“It’s so undignified,” said Cicily promptly. “If Aunt Muriel wanted to marry again, why didn’t she do it years ago?” + 

“My dear,” said Jane gently, “her husband was living.” + 

“If you call it living,” said Cicily cheerfully. She had appropriated Robin Redbreast and was removing his scarlet sweater. Little Jane was already seated on Isabel’s knee. Jane put her arm around John and drew him gently to her. She leaned her cheek against the embroidered chevron on the sleeve of his navy-blue reefer. The twins looked exactly alike, brown-eyed and solemn and very like their great-grandfather. Their souls were different, however. Matter-of-fact and matter-of-fancy, Jane always called them. John’s soul was matter-of-fancy. He was a lovely, imaginative little boy. His big brown eyes looked up at her wistfully. There was nothing in the world more endearing, Jane reflected tenderly, than the freckles on an eight-year-old nose! + 

But Cicily was still intrigued with the problems of her Aunt Muriel. + 

“I should think she would have fallen in love with someone else long since,” she said. + 

Jane’s eyes met Isabel’s. She hoped her sister was going to restrain herself. The hope was vain, however. + 

“She’s been falling in love with someone else every six months for the last thirty years,” said Isabel shortly. + 

“Why didn’t she walk out on Uncle Bert, then?” asked Cicily lightly. “Why didn’t she get a divorce?” + 

Jane glanced uneasily at the twins. Eight-year-old children were very understanding. Cicily never seemed to care what she said in their hearing. + 

“The Lesters are a very conventional family,” she said gravely. “I’m sure your Aunt Muriel never thought of divorce. Not even before Uncle Bert’s stroke.” + 

“Why not?” asked Cicily again. + 

“She had Albert to consider,” said Isabel. + 

“Albert?” cried Cicily. Her voice was greatly astonished. “What had Albert to do with it?” + 

“It would have broken up his home,” said Isabel, a trifle sententiously. + 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Cicily. “He might have drawn a very good stepfather.” + 

“Men who love married women,” said Isabel with asperity, “don’t make very good stepfathers.” + 

Cicily looked up at her with interest. Robin Redbreast slid from her knees to the floor. + 

“Do you mean she really had lovers?” + 

Isabel did not reply. In her turn, she glanced a little uneasily at the twins. Her silence was very eloquent. + 

“How stupid of her!” said Cicily. “A woman who takes a lover is always the underdog.” + 

“Your Aunt Muriel wasn’t,” said Isabel. “There was always a good deal of talk, of course, but she managed things very cleverly.” + 

“I don’t believe in promiscuity,” said Cicily firmly. + 

“Cicily!” cried Isabel sharply. “What words you use! At your age your mother and I wouldn’t have⁠—” + 

“I can’t see that it makes much difference what you call things, Aunt Isabel,” said Cicily cheerfully. “You and Mother certainly didn’t believe in it and I don’t either. It isn’t practical and it’s terribly complicated. I believe in monogamy.” + 

“You reassure me, darling,” murmured Jane, with a smile. + 

“I believe,” continued Cicily stoutly, “that when a married woman falls in love, she ought to march straight to the divorce court and make everything regular.” + 

“Oh,” said Jane, still with the smile, “progressive monogamy.” + 

“Exactly,” said Cicily. Then added wisely, “No woman is ever really happy trying to live with two men at once. And no woman is ever really happy without her marriage lines.” + 

“No woman is eventually happy,” said Jane rather solemnly, “if she doesn’t play the game with the cards that were dealt her.” + 

“Why?” said Cicily promptly. “Not all games are like that. I think life’s very like poker. You look over your hand and keep what you like, and what you don’t, you discard. Throw away your Jack, you know, and hope for a king!” + 

Cicily was smiling a little over her play on words. It was an innocent little joke, of course, but Jane was very thankful that Isabel had not noticed it. + 

“And if you draw a deuce?” she said soberly. + 

“Have faith in the future,” said Cicily lightly, “and keep your poker face. There’s always a new deal.” + 

“You talk,” said Jane severely, “as if a woman had nine lives like a cat.” + 

“She could have,” said Cicily, “if she had vision and courage.” + 

“Vision!” cried Jane. “What takes vision is to recognize the imperial qualities in the cards in your hand! What takes courage is to win the pot with a deuce spot!” + 

“I call that bluffing,” said Cicily, cheerfully. “You fool the world, but you don’t fool yourself. You may win the pot, but it’s not worth the winning. What’s fun is a game with a handful of face cards!” + 

For the last few minutes Isabel had not been listening to her argumentative daughter-in-law. Her next remark betrayed the fact that her thoughts had been wandering. + 

“Belle’s coming back for the wedding,” she said. + 

“Really?” cried Cicily. Her face lit up at the thought. “Oh, I’ll love to see Belle again! Is she bringing the children?” + 

Isabel nodded cheerfully. + 

“What fun!” cried Cicily. “What fun for all of us!” + 

It would be fun for all of them, Jane reflected, as she stood at the front door with Isabel an hour later and watched Cicily, attended by her cavalcade of children, disappear around the bushes at the entrance of the drive. The twins were trying to roller-skate, with a signal lack of success, on the gravel walk. The air resounded with their shrieks of triumph and emulation. Cicily was pushing an empty go-cart and guiding Robin Redbreast’s faltering footsteps with a maternal hand. At the turn of the path she paused to wave gaily back at the two grandmothers. + 

“Cicily’s a good mother,” said Isabel approvingly. + 

“She adores the children,” said Jane. “You know, Isabel,” she added slowly, “modern young people don’t mean all they say.” + 

“I don’t listen much to what Cicily says,” said Isabel. “But what I catch sounds very wild.” + 

“Their talk is wild,” said Jane. “But their lives are just as tame as ours were.” + 

“Except for the drink,” said Isabel. + 

“The drink, of course,” said Jane. “But Cicily never takes too much.” + 

“I’ve seen her pretty gay at the Casino,” said Isabel. Then added honestly, “But Jack was, too.” + 

“They all get pretty gay,” said Jane, “but the nice ones don’t get really tight. Not very tight, that is.” + 

“You don’t have to get very tight to be pretty loose!” said Isabel. She beckoned for her car as she spoke. It was waiting by the service entrance. “But I think you’re right. They don’t mean a thing by it.” + 

The motor drove slowly up to the front door. Isabel climbed into it. + 

“Goodbye, birthday child!” she cried, as it started into motion. She was waving cheerfully through the open window. “I can’t wait to tell Robin about Muriel.” + 

The car moved slowly down the drive. Jane lingered a moment on her doorstep looking after it in the pleasant May sunshine. Her thoughts were still busy with Cicily’s wild talk. To Jane, Cicily seemed barely out of the nursery. She looked barely out of the nursery with her dandelion head and her short slim skirts and her silly silky little legs! She might have been pushing her doll’s carriage down that drive! She shouldn’t be playing with thoughts like that, though. Edged tools in the hands of a child. + 

Jane turned on her doorstep and walked slowly back into the living-room to ring for the waitress to remove the ravaged tea-tray. She sank down in Stephen’s armchair. Of course the silly child did not mean a word that she had been saying. Good women talked differently in different generations but they always acted the same. + 

But did they? Women⁠—good women⁠—were getting divorced every day. Just as girls⁠—good girls⁠—were getting, well⁠—gay, every night. In Jane’s mother’s time a girl who got drunk, a woman who was divorced, was an outcast, a public scandal, a skeleton in a family closet. In her time and Isabel’s she was a deplorable curiosity⁠—more to be pitied than censured, perhaps, but always to be deplored. Now Cicily regarded intoxication as an incidental accident, dependent on the quality of bootlegged liquor that was served at a party. She regarded divorce as a practical aid to monogamous living. + 

When Stephen and young Steve came in from the five-fifty half an hour later, Jane was still sitting in the armchair. + 

“Jane?” called Stephen, from the front door. Before taking off his overcoat he came into the living-room to give her another birthday kiss. “What are you thinking about?” he inquired, “all alone by the fire.” + 

“It’s a godless age,” said Jane promptly. + 

Young Steve grinned pleasantly at her from the threshold. + 

“What have we done now?” he inquired cheerfully. + 

“It’s what you don’t do,” said Jane. “Or rather what you don’t think⁠—what you don’t feel.” + 

“What’s that got to do with God?” inquired Steve, as he, too, kissed her. + 

“I don’t know,” said Jane thoughtfully. “I guess God’s here, all right, as much as He ever was. But you⁠—you see Him differently.” Then suddenly it came to her just what sort of an age it was. “It’s a graceless age!” said Jane triumphantly. + 

“Not while you’re in it,” said Stephen with gallantry. + 

“Bravo, Dad!” laughed Steve. “That ought to cheer her!” + 

Jane looked tenderly up at her grey-haired, bald-headed Stephen. For a moment she saw him, slim, young, and debonair, standing by Mr. Bert Lancaster’s side beneath the crystal chandelier of Flora’s little third-floor ballroom. Almost as young as Steve, quite as carefree, just as good-looking. But yet an ardent supporter of the vanished dignities and decencies and decorums. Your husband’s point of view was a refuge, thought Jane. It was a sanctuary to which you fled from the assaults of time and your own children. It was where you belonged. If your husband was fifty-eight, thought Jane, you wanted, yourself, to be fifty! + 

“I am cheered!” said Jane. + 

II + 

“I get awfully fed up with it,” said Cicily. + 

“With what?” asked Jane. + 

“With this,” said Cicily. + 

Jane’s eyes followed her daughter’s around the drawing-room of the little French farmhouse. It was a charming room. It was in perfect order. The May sunshine was streaming in over the yellow jonquils and white narcissus of the window-boxes. Streaming in over the pale, plain rug, lighting the ivory walls, glinting here and there on the gold frame of an antique mirror, the rim of a clear glass bowl, the smooth, polished surfaces of the few old pieces of French furniture with which the room was sparsely furnished. The abrupt dark eyes of a Marie Laurencin over the fireplace met Jane’s enigmatically. That opal-tinted canvas was Cicily’s most cherished possession. Jane, herself, thought it very queer. The enigma of those chocolate eyes set in that pale blank face always made her feel a trifle uncomfortable. The lips were cruel, she thought. Nevertheless, the room was charming. + 

“I don’t know why you should,” she said slowly. “It’s all so nice.” + 

“It’s nice enough,” said Cicily vaguely. Then added honestly, after a brief pause, “It’s just the way I like it, really. Only⁠—” + 

“Only what?” said Jane gently. + 

“Only nothing ever happens in it,” said Cicily with sudden emphasis. “Do you know what I mean, Mumsy? Nothing ever happens to me. I sometimes feel as if these walls were just waiting to see something happen. Something ought to happen in a room as charming as this. I feel just that way about everything, Mumsy⁠—about my clothes and the way I look and all the trouble I take about the maids and the meals and the children. I’m everlastingly setting the stage, but the drama never transpires. I’d like a little bit of drama, Mumsy. Something nice and unexpected and exciting. Something different. Before I’m too old to enjoy it.” + 

The last sentence dispelled Jane’s sense of rising uneasiness with its touch of comic relief. + 

“You’re twenty-eight, Cicily,” she said, smiling. + 

“I know,” said Cicily, “but I’ve been married for nine years. I may be married for forty more. Am I just going to keep house in Lakewood for forty years? Keep house and play bridge and go in town to dinner and have people out for Sunday luncheon⁠—the same people, Mumsy⁠—until I grow old and grey-headed⁠—too old even to want anything different⁠—” She broke off abruptly. + 

Jane considered her rather solemnly for a moment in silence. Then, “Life’s like that, Cicily,” she said. + 

“Not all lives,” said Cicily. “There’s Jenny⁠—Jenny’s only three years younger than I am. She isn’t really happy, I think, Mumsy, but at least she’s free. She could light out if she wanted to⁠—she will some day, if she doesn’t marry⁠—and do almost anything. Make the world her oyster. But my life’s set. I signed on the dotted line before I was old enough to know what I was doing. I don’t mean that I really regret it, Mumsy⁠—Jack’s always been sweet to me and I love my children⁠—I want to have more children⁠—but just the same⁠—” Cicily rose uneasily from her little French armchair and stood staring out into the afternoon sunshine over the white and yellow heads of the jonquils and narcissus. “Oh, I don’t know what I want! Just girlhood over again, I guess. Just something else than this little front yard with the road to the station going by beyond the privet hedge, and Jack coming home from the five-fifty with a quart of gin in his pocket for a dinner-party full of people I wouldn’t care if I never saw again⁠—” She broke off once more and continued to stare moodily out into the pleasant May sunshine. + 

Jane watched the aureole of her dandelion hair a moment in silence. Then, “Well, Jack brings home the gin⁠—that’s something,” she ventured. She felt her attempt at the light touch was a trifle strained, however. + 

Cicily turned to face her. + 

“Yes,” she said. “He brings home the gin and he brings home the bacon, and he brings home a toy for the children he bought in the Northwestern Station. He adores the children and he loves me, but honestly, Mumsy, it’s years since he got any kick out of marriage. He takes it as a matter of course. He takes me as a matter of course. He never complains, but he hates Dad’s bank, and he’s just as bored with suburban gin as I am. I tell you, Mumsy, the excitement has gone out of things for Jack, too. But he signed on the dotted line and he sticks by his bargain. And he’s only thirty-one⁠—with forty years ahead of him! That’s rather grim, isn’t it? I don’t know, of course, if he’s ever realized just how grim it is⁠—” + 

Again Cicily lapsed into silence. She threw herself despondently back in her armchair. “Don’t you think it’s funny, Mumsy, the things you never discuss with your own husband?” Then, as Jane did not reply, “Perhaps you did, though. I can’t imagine anyone having any inhibitions with Dad.” + 

Jane met her daughter’s eyes for a moment in silence. She hoped her own were as enigmatic as those of the Marie Laurencin over the fireplace. She could not bring herself to discuss Stephen, even with Cicily. + 

“Don’t worry about those inhibitions,” she said presently. “For love creates them. Love and fear, which always go hand in hand. When you love people, you are always really afraid⁠—afraid of hurting them, afraid of disillusioning them, afraid of the spoken word which may upset the apple cart. Respect for the spoken word, Cicily, is the greatest safeguard in life against catastrophe.” + 

Cicily’s wide blue eyes were rather uncomprehending. + 

“Just the same I’d like to break down the barriers. I’d like to be with Jack the way I used to be⁠—happy and free and wild. Not thinking, not considering. But I guess you can never feel that way twice⁠—about the same person that is⁠—” + 

The sound of the front door closing broke in on Cicily’s last perilous words. They were still trembling on the circumambient air when Jack, hat in hand, stood on the threshold. + 

“Hello, Aunt Jane!” he said. His friendly, pale blue eyes were twinkling cheerfully. “I stopped at the garage in the village, Cicily, to see what was wrong with the Chrysler. They say you stripped those gears again. I wish⁠—” + 

A faint frown of irritation deepened on Cicily’s white brow. + 

“Did you call up Field’s about that bill?” she said. Then to Jane, “Aunt Isabel always gets her account mixed up with ours.” + 

“I did,” said Jack. “But it wasn’t Mother this time. It was your return credits. On the last day of every month, Aunt Jane, Cicily has half the merchandise in the store waiting in our front hall to be called for.” + 

He advanced to the armchair as he spoke and kissed Cicily’s pink cheek, a trifle absentmindedly. + 

“Where are the kids?” + 

“Eating supper,” said Cicily. “We’re dining out.” + 

Jane rose. She felt incredibly depressed by this little conjugal colloquy. As she walked slowly home over the suburban sidewalks, past rows and rows of little brick and wood and stucco houses, temples of domesticity enshrined, this loveliest, leafy season of the year, in flowering lilacs and apple trees in bloom, she reflected stoically that marriage was, of course, like that. The first fine careless rapture was bound to go. Something else came⁠—something else took its place⁠—something you held as your most priceless possession by the time you were fifty. Nevertheless, it was disconcerting to have seen it so clearly happening to the next generation. It was disconcerting to know, without peradventure of a doubt, that, to cheerfully smiling, subconsciously philosophic Jack, Cicily had come to look only like Cicily. + 

III + 

“Muriel,” said Isabel, “looked amazingly young.” + 

“She certainly did,” said Jane. + 

“And wasn’t she wonderful with Pearl and Gertie?” + 

“My heart rather warmed to Gertie,” said Jane. “She was crying all through the ceremony.” + 

“It’s enough to make anybody cry,” said Isabel, “to see a sixty-year-old father making a fool of himself.” + 

They were sitting on the old brown sofa in the Pine Street library. An hour before they had seen Muriel depart in a shower of rice for her trip around the world with Ed Brown. The rice had been Albert’s eleventh-hour inspiration. He had foraged for it in the kitchen and thrust it, hilariously, into the hands of the younger generation. His three little daughters had thrown it, delightedly, at their grandmother. The rice, Jane thought, had rather disconcerted Muriel. + 

The entire family were taking supper with Mrs. Ward. The children and grandchildren were making merry in the yellow drawing-room across the hall. Belle was strumming out Gershwin on the old Steinway upright. The throbbing notes of the jazz melody vibrated incongruously in the little brown library. The Bard of Avon looked a bit bewildered, Jane thought. His wide mahogany eyes stared blankly over the heads of the two sisters. + 

Mrs. Ward was in the dining-room with Minnie. It was a long time since Mrs. Ward had given so large a dinner-party⁠—fifteen people, not counting Robin Redbreast and Belle’s youngest daughter, who had had their puffed rice in the pantry and were now supposedly asleep in the guestroom upstairs. All family, of course. Still, Mrs. Ward had brought out the cut-glass goblets and the Royal Worcester china and her very best long damask tablecloth. She had had the silver loving-cup polished and had filled it with roses for the centre of the table. Jack had brought her some gin and vermouth and Isabel had lent her her cocktail glasses. Mrs. Ward was just making sure that the nut and candy dishes were placed straight with the candlesticks. Since Minnie had been promoted from the pantry to the role of companion, Mrs. Ward’s confidence in a waitress’s eye for symmetry had wavered. + 

“Albert was very funny,” said Isabel suddenly, “with that rice.” + 

“Albert is funny,” said Jane. “Funny and nice, too. He was sweet with Ed Brown, but yet you could see he didn’t miss a trick. He was touched and amused and amusing, all at once. He treats his mother just like a contemporary.” + 

“Live and let live is always Albert’s policy,” said Isabel. “Belle finds it rather trying. Belle’s like me⁠—she always has an opinion. A completely tolerant husband can be very irritating.” + 

“I like him,” said Jane. “I like him very much.” She hesitated for a moment toying with the thought of telling Isabel that she found Albert greatly improved, then abandoning it. You could not tell your sister that you found her son-in-law greatly improved, without tacitly implying that you had previously felt that there was room for great improvement. + 

Jane had never quite been able to overcome her prejudice against Albert because he was his father’s son. Jane’s distrustful dislike for Bert Lancaster was rooted deep in the hidden instincts of her childhood. She had subconsciously transferred it to his boy. That was unfair, Jane reflected honestly. Albert had sowed some wild oats in college. He had been a dangerously beautiful young man. Muriel had adored and spoiled him. But he had married Belle and gone to Oxford and entered the diplomatic service and had done very well for himself, until the lack of a great fortune had hampered his further advancement. He had given it up, temporarily, and come home to enter the aeroplane industry, to make, he had said laughingly, a million dollars. “I’ve rented my soul to Mammon” had been his phrase. + 

“Here come the boys,” said Isabel suddenly. The robust sound of masculine laughter was heard in the hall. Robin and Stephen entered the library, carrying Jack’s cocktail and Isabel’s glasses on Mrs. Ward’s silver tray. + 

“Mamma!” called Jane. + 

“Children!” called Isabel. + 

The throb of the Gershwin stopped abruptly in the yellow drawing-room. + 

“Drinks!” rang out Cicily’s voice above the talk and laughter. + 

Mrs. Ward entered the room. She looked a very pretty old lady in the new black silk dress she had bought for the wedding. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement over the nut and candy dishes. + 

“I hope that ice was cracked right for you, Robin,” she said anxiously. “We don’t know much about cocktails in this house. Your father never served them,” she added in superfluous explanation to Jane and Isabel. “Just wine and a highball for the gentlemen. Was the ice right, Robin?” + 

“Perfect!” responded Robin with a twinkle. “I never saw ice more expertly cracked!” + 

But Mrs. Ward did not smile. + 

“I’m very glad,” she said earnestly. + 

Just then the children trooped in from the hall. Jane looked up at them with a proud, proprietary smile. They were nice children. They made a pretty picture, in the modern manner, to be sure, as they clustered about the tray of cocktails. Jenny, slim, blonde, and boyish, in the tailor-made sport suit she affected at even a June wedding, sipping the amber liquid that was just the colour of her short, shining hair. Steve, a little flushed with nuptial champagne, singing a reminiscent fragment of the Gershwin as he shook the silver shaker. Belle and Cicily arm in arm on the hearthrug. Pretty Belle, who still looked like an apple blossom, a slightly paler, rather more full-blown apple blossom, clad in the flattering, fluttering pink panels of her French frock, and Cicily smiling beside her, her flower-like head rising proudly from a sheaf of pale green chiffon. Pleasant, snub-nosed Jack coming up with a cocktail in either hand for his wife and his sister. Albert in the doorway, dark and distinguished, not very tall, lithe and slim-waisted, with something of the Greek athlete about him in spite of his cutaway, smiling, over the heads of the brown-eyed twins and his own two dark-haired daughters, at the young women on the hearthrug. Steve approached him with the silver shaker. Albert accepted his glass. + 

“I give you a toast,” he said suddenly. “To Muriel and the reconstructed life!” + 

They all drank it riotously. Albert was sweet about his mother, thought Jane. So many sons would have resented that ridiculous mésalliance. Did Albert, in his heart? Isabel, of course, voiced the thought. + 

“How do you really feel about it, Albert?” she inquired curiously. + 

“Me?” said Albert innocently, extending his empty glass toward Steve. “Why, I believe in reconstruction. Mother’s had a pretty thin time the last fifteen years. It’s never too late to mend. We all learned that in our copybooks. Another cocktail, Cicily?” + 

Cool and aloof and flower-like, Cicily accepted the glass. She flashed a brief, bright smile up into Albert’s admiring eyes. + 

“I adore cocktails,” she said. + 

Suddenly across Jane’s mind shot the picture of a very different Cicily. A mutinous, moody Cicily, turning in the sunshine of her little French window to declare, “Jack’s just as bored with suburban gin as I am!” This was Jack’s gin, but the child did not look bored at all. Of course she was happy. She had not meant those perilous words that had troubled Jane so profoundly. She was still smiling up at Albert Lancaster over the rim of her little crystal goblet. + 

“It’s fire and ice,” she said, with a little thirsty gasp. “Exciting. Like love and hate. Like life, as it ought to be.” + 

“Like you, as you are,” said Albert gallantly. His eyes were bent admiringly on her cool, blonde radiance. His gallantry, Jane thought, was a bit professional. A technique in handling women, very alien to Lakewood. But he had hit the nail on the head. “Fire and ice” was rather like Cicily in her high moments. She did not seem at all impressed, however, with the accuracy of the description. + 

“He’s irresistible, isn’t he, Belle?” she was saying calmly. + 

The waitress appeared on the threshold. Jane caught a glimpse of Minnie’s plump figure, hovering officiously in the hall beyond. Minnie was going to see that dinner, on this important occasion, was announced correctly. + 

“Come, children,” said Mrs. Ward. + 

Robin offered her his arm. Stephen appropriated Isabel. Steve turned up at Belle’s elbow. Jenny clapped Jack familiarly on the shoulder. + 

“You’re elected, old top!” she said. + 

Albert and Cicily were left alone on the hearthrug. She turned from him abruptly to place her empty glass on the mantelshelf. + 

“Cicily,” smiled Albert, “do you know what you’ve done while my back was turned? You’ve grown up into a damned dangerous woman!” + 

Cicily met his eyes with a frosty little twinkle of complete composure. Girls were wonderful, thought Jane. You would think, to look at her, that Cicily had been talked to like that for years. + 

“Then watch your step!” laughed Cicily. “Don’t get burned or frostbitten.” + 

Jane followed them from the room, hand in hand with her grand-twins. Belle’s dark-haired daughters trooped at her side. Their frizzy black curls recalled the Muriel of Miss Milgrim’s School. It was fun, this reunion⁠—it was lovely to have all this big family under one roof again. + 

Standing behind her chair, Jane looked down the long white damask expanse of the candlelit table, across the cut-glass goblets and the Royal Worcester china and the loving-cup of roses, to the frail little matriarch in a new black silk dress who was the head of the clan, then turned, instinctively, to her father’s chair. Her brown-eyed grandson was going to occupy it⁠—little John Ward Bridges, aged eight. + 

“I hope I live long enough,” she thought suddenly, “to see my great-grandchildren.” Steve, on her other hand, was pulling out her chair. She sat down in the gay staccato confusion of talk and laughter. “I hope I live long enough,” she thought solemnly, “to see what happens to everyone. To know they’re safe⁠—” + 

Just then John Ward upset his glass of water in the nearest nut dish. In meeting the emergency of the moment, Jane forgot to be solemn. Later, she watched Cicily rather closely across the prattling queries and vast gastronomical silences of her grandson’s table manners. Cicily never looked happier⁠—never looked prettier⁠—never seemed to take more trouble to be charming and gay. Jane felt she had been a very foolish mother. There was no need to be profoundly troubled. + 

IV + 

I + 

Jane sat at the wheel of her motor, absentmindedly threading her way through the congested traffic of Sheridan Road. She had just returned to the West from her so-called holiday at Gull Rocks and was running into town to take tea with Isabel at her mother’s. + 

Jane loved to drive a car and she loved the sense of relief, of escape, of expansion that she always experienced when she had left Gull Rocks behind her. The summer had been difficult. Jane was reviewing it in thought as she rolled down the boulevard. She was thinking of the old, old Carvers, now both over eighty; and of sacrificed Silly, who, a wiry sixty, never left home for an hour; and of Alden, who was such a stuffed shirt, a cartoon of a banker; and of the complications presented by the month in which Robin Redbreast and the twins had been with them, and of how Cicily had not realized when she sent them East with just Molly, the nurse, what it did to an old couple of eighty-odd to shelter three roistering great-grandchildren under their roof for thirty-one days; and of how Stephen still incredibly loved the place, and young Steve, too, and of how they had won seven races together and had been presented with a silver cup at the annual yacht club dinner, and of how delighted old Mr. Carver had been! Like a child, Mr. Carver was, and Stephen, too, and young Steve, over that silver cup! It was absurd of them, but it was very endearing. The summer had had its better moments. Nevertheless, Jane was glad to be home again. + 

It was a lovely late September afternoon. The lake still held its shade of summer blue. Its little curving waves, so unlike the ocean ones, were breaking and rippling along its yellow beaches. Jane could see them out of the corner of her eye, across the well-kept lawns of the squat, square brick and terra-cotta houses that lined the waterfront. The geometric, skyscraping angles of the Edgewater Beach Hotel loomed up before her. + 

Curious to think that she had known this waterfront when it was a waste of little yellow sand dunes and scrub-oak groves. Not a house in sight. Just stunted oaks and a few stone pines and sand⁠—sandy roads along which you had to push your bicycle. Your bicycle⁠—your Columbia Safety! It wasn’t very far from here, just south of the old white limestone Marine Hospital, that she had picnicked with André and his father and mother the night that he had asked her to marry him. Asked her to marry him on the moonlit beach that had long since been gobbled up, filled in, and landscaped in the Lincoln Park extension. The very place had vanished, like the boy and girl, who had turned into Mrs. Stephen Carver of Lakewood and André Duroy, academician and distinguished sculptor. + 

There was a Diana of André’s now in the Art Institute. Jane often dropped in to look at it. Often? Come, now, old girl, thought Jane, challenging with a smile her little mood of sentiment, how often? Twice a year, perhaps. She never found time for the Art Institute as often as she meant to. Still, she never went there without pausing for a moment before André’s Diana. + 

Flora had never written much about him. More about his young wife, who seemed to be quite a girl. Quite a girl, in the discreet, sophisticated French manner that you read about in books and never quite believed in. Flora had a gift with the pen and Jane felt she knew a great deal about Cyprienne. Cyprienne was thirty-three. There was a lot of talk, Flora had said, about her and a young attaché in the British Embassy. His mother, a grand old dowager, was fearfully upset about it, for there was a name and a title and he was an only son. She was a Catholic, of course, and would never divorce. André was only fifty-two. It was hard on the young attaché. It was even harder, Jane thought, with Victorian simplicity, on André. Flora had never attempted to describe his reactions. Jane knew, however, just what kind of a husband André would be. There was enough of American upbringing in André, enough of Victorian Pine Street, to make him loathe a situation like that. And yet be kind⁠—like all good American husbands who put up with their restless wives. + 

Restless wives⁠—Cicily. A little unconscious smile played over Jane’s lips as she paused for the traffic light at the entrance of the park and thought of how silly she had been to worry so much about Cicily last spring. The child had written her such happy letters all summer, and the moment she had seen her face, two days ago, at the gate of the Twentieth Century in the La Salle Street Station, she had known that the trouble, whatever it was, had blown over. It was nice for Cicily that Belle had taken that little house in Lakewood. She was full of plans for the early autumn parties. She had bought some pretty clothes. + 

They would all have a pleasant winter together, reflected Jane, as she rolled through the southern entrance of the park and out onto the stream-like bend of the Lake Shore Drive. It was a lovely street, she thought, edging that great, empty plane of blue and sparkling water. One of the loveliest city streets in the world. If it were in Paris, you would cross the ocean to see it. If it were in London, you would have heard of it all your life. If it were in Venice, the walls of the world’s art galleries would be hung with oils and watercolours and etchings of its felicities of tint and line. But here, in Chicago, no one paid much attention to it. The decorous row of Victorian houses, withdrawn in their lawns, were discreetly curtained against that dazzling wash of light and colour. Only the new, bare, skyscraping apartments, rising here and there flush from the pavement, seemed aware of the view. They cheapened it, they commercialized it, they exploited it, but at least they knew it was there. + 

The Oak Street Beach, as Jane rolled past it, looked like a Sorolla canvas in the mellow afternoon sunshine. The golden sands were streaked and slashed and spotted with brilliant splashes of colour. Bathers, in suits of every conceivable hue, were sunning themselves on the beach. Men, incredibly brown, were breasting the blue waves. Girls were shrieking with delight in the nearer breakers. Children were paddling in the shallows. Jane had known the end of Oak Street before the beach had been there. The curve of filled-in land to the south had created it. Oak Street used to end in a row of waterlogged pilings, held in place by blocks of white limestone. Pilings on which ragged fishermen had sat, with tin cans of bait and strings of little silver fish at their side. It seemed just a year or two to Jane since she had seen the end of Oak Street looking just like that. + 

“Chicago,” thought Jane solemnly, “makes you believe in Genesis. It makes you believe that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth.” + 

Jane loved Chicago. They would all have a pleasant winter together. + 

II + 

“I want to talk to you,” Isabel had whispered. “Don’t say anything in front of Mamma.” She was handing Jane her teacup as she spoke, in the little brown library. Mrs. Ward, preoccupied with misgivings on the consistency of the new cook’s sponge cake, had not heard her. Jane had looked up, a little startled, into Isabel’s plump, comfortable countenance. Her eyes looked rather worried. + 

“And how was Mrs. Carver’s arthritis?” Mrs. Ward was inquiring of Jane. “Poorly, I suppose, in that damp climate. We had a lovely summer in Chicago.” + 

Mrs. Ward always loved to talk about the infirmities of other old ladies, and she felt the need at the moment, to justify, in the minds of her daughters, her and Minnie’s contested decision to spend the dog-days in town. Jane let the statement pass unchallenged. No one could do anything with Minnie, and her mother had borne the heat very well. If she liked to spend the summer one mile from Chicago’s loop⁠—Isabel did look worried, thought Jane, as she commented favourably on the sponge cake. Probably Minnie was raising some kind of ruction again. + 

When she stood up to go an hour later, Isabel rose also. + 

“Run me home in your car, Jane,” she said. + 

The two sisters left the house together. + 

“Well, what is it?” asked Jane, as soon as they were seated in the motor. + 

“We can’t talk here,” said Isabel. “The traffic’s too noisy. Run me out on the lake front. Isn’t this street awful? We ought to make Mamma move.” + 

They certainly ought, thought Jane. Stripped of its elms, widened to twice its size, invaded by commerce and metamorphosed into North Michigan Boulevard, Pine Street bore no resemblance to the provincial thoroughfare of Jane’s childhood. The wide yards had vanished, and many of the old redbrick and brownstone houses had been pulled down to make way for the skyscrapers. Those that were left were defaced by billboards or disfigured with plate-glass show windows, in which gowns and cosmetics and lingerie were displayed for sale. Mrs. Ward was the only old resident, now living south of Chicago Avenue. + 

Jane turned down Superior Street in search of quiet. As they rolled past the dirty, decaying façade of a row of boardinghouses, she turned curiously to look at her sister. But Isabel was staring straight before her down the dusty street, her eyes on the flash of brilliant blue at the end of it that was the lake. + 

“Let’s park on the curve,” she said, as Jane turned into the outer drive. + 

Jane drew up at the edge of the parkway. The curve commanded a view of the Oak Street Beach again, seen now across blue water, with a ragged fringe of skyscrapers beyond it, outlined against a sunset sky. + 

“What’s on your mind, old girl?” said Jane. + 

“Can’t you guess?” said Isabel. + 

Jane looked at her with increasing uneasiness. This curious reticence was very unlike Isabel. Isabel was usually delighted to break the bad news. + 

“No,” said Jane. “I can’t.” + 

“It’s about Belle,” said Isabel. + 

“Isabel!” cried Jane. “She’s not having another baby?” + 

“No,” said Isabel. “I almost wish she were. It might help matters. But then, again, it might only make them worse.” + 

“What are you talking about?” cried Jane. + 

Isabel looked at her for a moment in silence. + 

“Cicily and Albert,” she said. + 

Jane really felt her heart turn over. She stared, dumbfounded, at Isabel. + 

“Cicily and⁠—Albert?” she stammered. + 

“It’s making Belle awfully unhappy,” said Isabel. Then, almost angrily, “Jane, you don’t mean to say you haven’t noticed it?” + 

“How could I have noticed it?” cried Jane, almost angrily in her turn. “I’ve been away all summer. I don’t believe it, anyway. Cicily wouldn’t⁠—Cicily couldn’t⁠—” + 

“Well, Cicily has,” said Isabel grimly. + 

“I don’t believe it,” said Jane again. + 

“You’ll have to believe it,” said Isabel sharply. “She was with him every minute all summer. She sent the children to Gull Rocks to get them out of the way. She used to motor out with him to that damned airport and fly with him all day and then motor in town at night and dine with him at the night clubs. Of course I don’t say there was any real harm in it, Jane, but it made Belle perfectly miserable. She felt so humiliated⁠—and bewildered. Why, Cicily was her best friend.” + 

“What⁠—what does Jack think?” asked Jane slowly. + 

“I don’t know what he thinks,” said Isabel. “He’d be the last, of course, to criticize Cicily. He acts⁠—he acts exactly as if it weren’t happening.” Her voice was trembling a little. “I wouldn’t speak to him about it for worlds.” + 

“Of course not,” said Jane quickly. “It⁠—it’s not a thing to talk about. But I know you’re exaggerating it, Isabel. You know Cicily⁠—” + 

“Yes, I know Cicily,” put in Isabel ironically. + 

“She’s pretty and gay and only twenty-eight. She’s been married nine years and she never really had her fling. I⁠—I suppose Albert turned her head. I think it’s outrageous of him to take advantage of her⁠—” + 

“Take advantage of her!” cried Isabel. + 

“Take advantage of her inexperience⁠—” + 

“Jane! You know as well as I do that such affairs are always the woman’s fault! The idea of Cicily, the mother of three children⁠—” + 

“It’s just a harmless flirtation!” cried Jane. She was conscious of blind prejudice as she spoke. She knew nothing about it. + 

“It’s not a very pretty flirtation,” said Isabel. + 

“I agree with you,” said Jane soberly. + 

“And it’s made a different woman of Cicily. Surely, Jane, you saw⁠—” + 

“I saw she looked very happy,” said Jane. + 

“A woman’s always happy,” said Isabel, “when she’s falling in love.” + 

“She’s not falling in love,” said Jane decidedly. She saw it all clearly now, in a flash of revelation. “She’s just falling for Albert. She’s falling for excitement and admiration and fun. She’ll snap out of it, Isabel.” + 

“Will you speak to her?” asked Isabel. + 

“I⁠—don’t⁠—know,” said Jane slowly. “I don’t know if it would do any good. Don’t you remember how you felt yourself, Isabel, about⁠—about parents⁠—speaking? It only irritated you.” + 

“I certainly don’t!” cried Isabel sharply. “There was never any occasion for parents to speak about a thing like that to me. Or to you, either, Jane.” + 

Jane sat a moment in silence, staring across the deep blue water at the glowing embers in the Western sky. + 

“I can remember⁠—I can remember,” she said slowly, “how I felt about parents⁠—mixing in and⁠—and spoiling things that were really lovely⁠—” + 

“What things?” pursued Isabel hotly. “You never had a beau in your life, Jane, after you married Stephen⁠—unless you count little Jimmy Trent! But this⁠—this is serious.” + 

“Perhaps,” said Jane. “I’ll think it over. But somehow I don’t believe much in parental influence. It’s something inside yourself that makes you behave, you know. Matthew Arnold knew⁠—‘the enduring power not ourselves which makes for righteousness.’ I don’t believe that Cicily would ever really be unkind⁠—would ever knowingly hurt others.” + 

“But she is hurting them!” cried Isabel. “She’s hurting Belle, this minute!” + 

“Well, she’ll stop,” said Jane stoutly. “She’ll stop when she realizes.” + 

Isabel opened the door of the motor. + 

“I’m going to walk home,” she said. She stood a moment hesitatingly by the side of the car. “It⁠—it upsets me so to talk about it, Jane.” Her lips were trembling again. “I’m going to walk home and⁠—and think of something else. I don’t want to worry Robin. We’ve never talked about it. I suppose that seems funny to you, Jane, but⁠—” She broke off a little helplessly. + 

“No. No, it doesn’t,” said Jane. “I’m glad you haven’t. I never worry Stephen. So many things blow over, you know, and if you haven’t said anything⁠—” + 

“Exactly,” said Isabel. + 

Jane stared a moment in silence, down into her troubled eyes. + 

“Children can just wreck you,” said Isabel. + 

Jane nodded. + 

“Give my love to Robin,” she said. She set the gears in motion and moved slowly off down the boulevard. “Little Jimmy Trent,” she was thinking. So that was all that Isabel had ever realized. She felt a sudden flood of sympathy for Cicily. Cicily, intoxicated with the wine of admiration. Cicily succumbing to the transcendent temptation to quicken a passion, to love and be loved. It was all very wrong, however. And very dangerous. Such temptations must be overcome. The wine of admiration could be forsworn. Cicily would, of course, forswear it. She could not speak to her. But she could watch. She could worry. That was what parents were for. + 

III + 

It was one o’clock on a late November morning and the first Assembly ball was in full swing in the ballroom of the Blackstone Hotel. The room was brilliantly lighted. Its gilded walls were hung with smilax and banked with palms and chrysanthemums. The floor was filled with dancers. A few elderly ladies, in full evening dress, were clustered in little groups on a row of gilt chairs, under the palms. A great crowd of young men were massed near the door. From that crowd, black broadcloth figures continually detached themselves, dashed into the revolving throng, tapped young women cavalierly on naked shoulders, drew them from their partners’ embrace and stalked solemnly off with them. + 

Modern dances always seemed stalking and solemn to Jane. She was sitting in the balcony that ran round the room, her arms on the smilax-hung railing gazing down at the kaleidoscope of light and movement and colour on the floor. She was wearing a new black velvet evening gown⁠—everyone wore a new gown to the first Assembly⁠—and she was vaguely wondering if the cane seat of her gilt chair was creasing the skirt. The balcony was crowded with other middle-aged women in other new evening gowns, sparsely attended by a sprinkling of middle-aged men. + 

Twenty feet away down the line of spectators sat Isabel, with Stephen, resigned and somnolent, standing behind her chair. Robin sat at Jane’s elbow. Jane knew everyone present and was tired of seeing them. She had seen them at an endless succession of first Assembly balls. Tonight they looked just as they always had. At the other balls they had worn other new evening gowns. That was the only difference. On an Oriental rug at the ballroom door a row of Jane’s contemporaries stood in line to receive the guests as they entered the room. Jane could remember when the hostesses at an Assembly ball had looked to her like a group of bedizened old ladies, pathetically tricked out in the garb of folly. Now the dancers seemed to her incredibly young. + 

Jane was watching Jenny, revolving on the floor beneath in the arms of what looked to Jane like an extremely Bacchic young man. She was wishing that Steve would cut in on her and take her away from him. Steve was a bit Bacchic, too, however. Too Bacchic to notice his sister’s predicament. He was standing by the receiving line, rallying Cora Delafield. Cora Delafield was at least five years Jane’s senior, but she rather specialized in Bacchic young men. Steve thought her very entertaining. Jane wished that Cicily would come. Her dinner-party was late. Jane wanted, ridiculously, to look just once at Cicily in her new white velvet, before taking Stephen home to bed. + 

Robin said something, but Jane could not hear it. She could not hear anything above the clash of the jazz orchestra at the end of the balcony. Modern balls were frightfully noisy. And there were always two orchestras, so you never had one single intermittent moment of peace. Stephen looked dog-tired. It was mean of her to keep him up a moment longer. It was mean of her to have brought him at all. Absurd to go to balls when you were fifty! You danced three times, perhaps, lumbering around the room with the more courteous men of your dinner-party, and then you retired to the balcony and talked to your brother-in-law, while you watched your own children. + 

Good gracious! Jenny’s young man had almost fallen down in negotiating a turn. He had torn the flounce of her blue chiffon gown. Steve had disappeared, taking Cora Delafield with him. Cora’s young men would do anything in reason, but they would not lead her out on the dancing floor. She tipped the scales at two hundred pounds. + 

Cora had the right idea, however. If you were going to go to balls in your fifth decade, it was much better to go in for Bacchic young men, on any terms, than to sit in the balcony, watching your own children and straining your ears to catch the amiable conversation of your brother-in-law, over the din of those infernal saxophones. + 

Why, there was Jack! Jack cutting in on Jenny, the darling! Jack could always be relied on. Jenny was talking and they were both laughing uproariously, casting discreet glances back at the Bacchic young man, left standing befuddled in the centre of the ballroom floor. Jenny was undoubtedly repeating some alcoholic anecdote! Girls did not care nowadays what they said, or what was said to them. Jane tried to imagine what would have happened to a Bacchic young man at a dance in Chicago in the middle nineties. Social ostracism⁠—nothing less. Prohibition had turned ballrooms into barrooms. + 

But where was Cicily? There was Belle, lovely-looking, too, in that silver gauze gown. Could Isabel be right? Was she worried, was she really worried, over Cicily and Albert? She did not look as if she had a care in the world, one-stepping mystically, with sweet raised face and half-closed eyes, in the arms of Billy Winter. He was a nice young man. Why didn’t Jenny fancy him? Why didn’t Jenny fancy anyone? She was twenty-six years old. It was nonsense⁠—it was utter nonsense⁠—her talk of wanting to leave home and live in New York and run dog kennels in Westchester County with Barbara Belmont. + 

But where was Cicily? If Jack and Belle were here, Cicily and Albert must be somewhere in the offing. They had come up in a taxi together, perhaps, from some young married dinner. Stopped, possibly, at a night club. Jane suddenly realized how tired she was. And how tired of wondering, as she had wondered for two months, just what was happening to Cicily in taxis and in night clubs. + 

The lights were dimming. The lights were going out. The orchestra was silenced. A spotlight shone brilliantly down on the centre of the ballroom floor. A young man indistinguishable in the darkness, his shirtfront picked out startlingly in the silver radiance, was shouting that Miss Ivy Montgomery, from the company of “Hot Chocolates” now playing at the Selwyn, would offer a dance. A slender quadroon in a spangled evening gown slipped suddenly into the spotlight. Her sleek oiled hair was shining. She smiled hugely, good-humouredly, her white teeth gleaming in the brutal orifice of her thick rouged lips. The orchestra crashed into a barbaric orgy of sound. + 

Where was Cicily, thought Jane, as she watched the contorted evolutions of Miss Montgomery’s Charleston⁠—or was it a Black Bottom?⁠—as she listened to the applause that broke from the apparently spellbound audience at the end of the dance. Where was Cicily, she thought, as two darky comedians followed Miss Montgomery into the spotlight, and tapped their flapping shoes and cracked their age-old jokes, to the accompaniment of throbbing saxophones and bursts of appreciative laughter. + 

The lights flashed up. The darkies had vanished. The dancers, in twos and fours and sixes, took possession once more of the ballroom floor. Jane glanced at her wrist watch. It was almost two o’clock. But there was Cicily! Cicily, slim and slinky in the folds of the new white velvet, passing down the receiving line, bending her dandelion head in charming deference before the dowager hostesses. And Albert was behind her. Well⁠—Jane had known he would be. He was good-looking. He stood waiting, tranquilly, under a palm, for Cicily to complete her amenities. Belle floated by, with Billy Winter again, her gauze flounces brushing her husband’s knee. She nodded serenely at him. Cicily abandoned the last dowager with a final radiant smile. There was a faint shadow of inattention in that radiance, however. It sprang from some inner joy. Jane shrewdly suspected that Cicily had not heard one word that the dowager had been saying. Albert stepped out to meet her. His fine young face was absolutely impassive. As Cicily moved into his arms, her glance swept the balcony. Meeting her mother’s eye, she smiled so innocently, so gaily, that no one but Jane herself would ever have sensed that there was something a bit unnatural in the innocence, in the gaiety, of that smile. + 

“She wishes that I weren’t watching her,” thought Jane, as she smiled and nodded brightly in response. + 

IV + 

Jane was walking briskly down the main street of Lakewood, enjoying the first winter snowfall. The air was damply mild. Great feathery flakes were drifting all around her. The ground was covered with a thin, wet blanket of snow. The roofs of the village stores, the bare boughs of the oak trees, were frosted with soft, white icing. The whiteness of the world contrasted vividly with the yellow grey of the December sky. + 

Jane was on her way to the Woman’s Club, to watch her grandchildren’s dancing class. She often dropped in, on Tuesday afternoons, to look at it. In the midst of the uncertainties and perplexities engendered by the sight of her own children, Jane always found a glimpse of her grandchildren very comforting. Moreover, in a world of shifting values, of mental hazards and moral doubts, there was something absurdly reassuring in the sight of anything that remained so exactly the same as dancing school. + 

This afternoon, for instance, as soon as she entered the vestibule of the Woman’s Club, the reassuring notes of the “Blue Danube” fell caressingly on her ears. Mr. Bournique was still teaching children to waltz. Teaching the twins to waltz, as he had taught Cicily and Jenny and Steve, as his father had taught Jane herself. Jane could distinctly recall her sensations when she had waltzed to the strains of the “Blue Danube,” not with a partner, but standing with Flora and Muriel in a long line of little girls, with a long line of little boys behind them, her eyes conscientiously fixed on old Mr. Bournique’s striped trouser legs and black patent-leather shoes. She remembered her white organdie dress, with pink ribbons run through it, and the fat pink satin bows on her thin pigtails. That was before she was old enough to be ashamed of her pigtails, to long for curls⁠—before she had met André. The Bourniques were an institution in Chicago, as old as the aristocracy of the Western city. + 

Jane entered the ballroom. And there was Mr. Bournique, grey-haired and slender, dominating the scene, gliding and bending to the thin, tinkling strains of the Woman’s Club piano. And there was the line of little girls and the line of little boys, gliding and bending behind him, their eyes conscientiously fixed on his striped trouser legs and black patent-leather shoes. Slick-haired little boys in blue serge suits and fairy-like little girls in light thin dresses. One fat little boy who could not keep time and one fat little girl who would never get partners. Every dancing class, reflected Jane, as she sat down at the end of the row of indifferent governesses in the far corner of the room, every dancing class had one fat little girl who was always reduced to dancing with Mr. Bournique, who could not aspire to even the fat little boy who could not keep time for a partner. + 

Her grandson noticed her immediately. He waved and grinned and lost his step in welcome. His sister was an excellent dancer. She had inherited Jane’s straight hair, however. But straight hair was not the curse of woman that it had been forty years ago. Belle’s little daughters’ wiry black curls bobbed up and down like shavings, just as Muriel’s had done in the late eighties. Mr. Bournique’s castanets clapped sharply in his gloved hands. The music stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar. + 

“Take partners!” he said. + 

The little girls sat down promptly on the benches that lined the room. The little boys walked deliberately over to them. They scanned the little girls’ indifferent faces indifferently. They bowed profoundly before their chosen partners. The little girls rose and curtsied. Mr. Bournique’s castanets clapped sharply in his gloved hands. The music started abruptly. The children began waltzing falteringly, their heads bent, their eyes on their own feet. All but the fat little girl, who, clasped in the firm gloved hands of Mr. Bournique, was moving about the room with the grace of a fairy. + 

This was much more fun, thought Jane, than watching a first Assembly ball. And it was reassuring to see so much Deportment⁠—deportment with a capital D! It might be the late eighties all over again! Just then Jane heard Cicily’s low laugh ring out happily in the hall without. + 

“Oh, yes, you do!” she was saying. “They’re utterly darling!” + 

Jane’s startled eyes were on the doorway when Cicily and Albert entered the room. Her first impression was that never, never, had she seen the child looking so pretty. Her dark fox fur, her little black hat, were silvered with melting snowflakes. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright and her lips were parted in a little possessive smile of provocative mockery. She was glancing over her shoulder at Albert⁠—Albert, who was obviously entering the ballroom under protest, who would much rather have prolonged his walk with Cicily in the privacy of the first December snowstorm without. She sank into a chair near the entrance, laughed up at him, and then, with a little gesture of confiding intimacy, reached up to touch his sleeve and motion him down into the seat at her side. He covered her hand with his own and sat down, saying something straight into her sparkling eyes. Cicily did not reply. She withdrew her hand and turned away and sat looking at the waltzing children, her eyes bright with happiness, her lips still parted in a little involuntary smile. Albert sat motionless, his eyes upon her profile. + 

Jane turned away her glance. She felt suddenly guilty. This⁠—this was just like eavesdropping, listening at doors, peeking through keyholes. She would not look at Cicily again. + 

Jane never knew how long she had remained, her unseeing eyes fixed rigidly on the little faltering dancers, wondering, helplessly, what ought to be done. When next she noticed him, Mr. Bournique, arm in arm with a decorous little lady who had to stand on tiptoe to reach his elbow, was leading the final grand march around the room. He paused at the door, to bow meticulously to each tiny couple as they made their ultimate exit. Over his grey head Jane could see that Cicily’s chair was empty. So they had seen her and, thinking themselves unseen, had slipped away together into the December snowstorm. Where were they now? What were they saying? Into what perilous indiscretion was Cicily falling? Little John Ward was pulling at her elbow. + 

“Did you see Mother, Grandma, here with Uncle Albert?” + 

Jane stared a moment in silence down into his wide brown eyes. + 

“Was she here, darling?” + 

“Yes. But she didn’t wait. How’ll we get home? Jane’s putting on her overshoes.” + 

In the tangle of perplexities confronting her, Jane recognized with relief that her first practical obligation was clear. She would walk home in the dark with the twins. + 

V + 

Jane sat in a corner of Cicily’s French drawing-room, waiting for Cicily to come home. Walking with the twins through the snowy streets of Lakewood, withdrawn from their artless prattle in the sanctuary of thought, Jane had finally arrived at a decision. Something must be done⁠—and done quickly. She would speak to Cicily. She would not procrastinate. She would not falter. She would go in with the twins and talk with Cicily that very afternoon. Perhaps she would find Albert in the little French drawing-room. If so, she would wait, stonily, tactlessly, until he had withdrawn. + 

She had not found Albert. The maid at the door had informed her that Mrs. Bridges had not yet come in. The girl had thrown a concerned glance at Jane’s snow-powdered coat and saturated shoes. She had turned on one drawing-room lamp and lit the fire under the Marie Laurencin and had brought Jane a little pot of tea on a painted tray. + 

Jane had consumed the reviving liquid very gratefully. The twins were upstairs in the playroom, doing their homework. Robin Redbreast was eating his supper in the dining-room across the hall. When she had first come in, Jane had not felt equal to sustaining a conversation with even Robin Redbreast. She had finished her tea and was gazing, somewhat like a rabbit fascinated by a snake, at the blank chocolate-coloured eyes and thin, cruel lips of the Marie Laurencin, thinking that the opal-tinted lady had rather the air of passing an ironical comment on her own agitated state of mind. + 

The mood of the Marie Laurencin was the modern one of detached cynicism. “Well, what of it?” she seemed to be saying. “Why carry on like this about it? Surely you’re not surprised!” + 

Jane tried to think that she was not surprised, feeling an absurd obligation to justify her Victorian point of view to the opal-tinted lady. At least she admitted that she should not be surprised. This was only the sort of thing that happened, unhappily, now and then in every age. However, when it concerned your own daughter⁠—But Albert Lancaster was merely running true to form. He was his father’s son. He had dragged Cicily into this mess. He would soon tire of her. And then⁠—what a hell of readjustment awaited the poor child. + 

Jane was roused from revery by the sound of the front door opening and closing. Cicily’s light step was heard in the hall. She was alone. Albert had not come in with her. Her voice, very practical and pleasant, was addressing the waitress at the door. + 

“Send the car to the Woman’s Club for the twins at once, Ella. I forgot to stop in at their dancing school. They must be waiting.” + 

Jane heard the waitress start to speak, but Cicily did not pause for a reply. She appeared, abruptly, in the door of the little French drawing-room. The shoulders of her coat, her dark fox fur, her little black hat were all thickly frosted with soft wet snow. She must have been walking in the storm ever since she had left the Woman’s Club. She did not see Jane. She walked quickly over to the antique mirror that hung between the windows. Standing directly in front of it she stared, wide-eyed, at her own reflection in the glass. Jane stared, too, a startled, involuntary stare, at the face in the mirror. The cheeks were rose-red, the eyes were starry bright, the lips were parted in a reminiscent smile. Suddenly Cicily gave a little gasp. + 

“Oh!” she said softly, and pressing her dark-gloved hands to her rose-red cheeks, continued to stare, wide-eyed at the face in the mirror. + 

“Cicily,” said Jane gently. + 

The child started, terrifically. Then faced about, her lips no longer smiling, her eyes no longer starry. Slowly, like a curtain, a veil of controlled indifference dropped over her features. + 

“Mumsy!” she said. “I didn’t know you were there. You frightened me.” + 

Jane rose slowly from her chair in the corner. + 

“Cicily,” she said, “I’ve come to talk to you.” + 

Behind the veil of indifference, Cicily’s young face hardened defensively. + 

“What about?” she said. + 

Jane drew a long breath. + 

“About yourself⁠—and Albert.” + 

There was a brief pause. Cicily moved to the fireplace and, stripping off her gloves, stood with her back to the room, holding her hands out to the warmth of the crackling flames. + 

“I wouldn’t, Mumsy,” she said finally. + 

“I have to,” said Jane. She was conscious that her knees were wobbling disconcertingly. She sat down rather suddenly in the armchair near the fire. There was another pause. Cicily continued to gaze down at the burning logs. She moved her thin, white hands a trifle nervously. The firelight sparkled on the diamond in her engagement ring. Jane looked steadily at those thin white hands. + 

“Well,” said Cicily, finally, “all right. Shoot. I suppose you have to get it off your chest.” She turned abruptly as she spoke and flung herself moodily down on the hearthrug. She tossed off her little black hat and dark fox fur. The snow on them was melting rapidly in the heat from the fire. There was quite a little puddle on the light grey rug before Jane spoke again. + 

“Cicily,” she began slowly, “I don’t⁠—I don’t know quite what’s happening, but I know it’s dangerous. I know you’re not behaving⁠—just the way you ought to behave. Don’t think I don’t sympathize with you, because I do⁠—” She stopped, checked by the sight of the little scornful smile that was flickering on Cicily’s lips, then continued lamely, “I do sympathize with you, Cicily, but⁠—” + 

“But you believe in the Ten Commandments,” said Cicily brightly. “Especially the seventh. Well⁠—so do I, Mumsy, and I haven’t broken it. There. Will that satisfy you?” + 

“Cicily,” said Jane reproachfully, “I’m not joking.” + 

“Neither am I,” said Cicily promptly. “I don’t think adultery’s a joke. And I shouldn’t dream of committing it. Some do, of course, but I’ve always thought they were fools. I’m keeping my head, Mumsy, I’m keeping it like anything. But I haven’t made up my mind. Until I do, I don’t see what’s the use of discussion.” + 

“You don’t see⁠—what’s the use of discussion?” faltered Jane. + 

“No, I don’t,” said Cicily bluntly. “It’s my affair. Mine and Albert’s. And, in a secondary capacity, of course, Jack’s and Belle’s. It’s a very difficult situation, and it all depends on me. I don’t want to make any mistake!” + 

“But Cicily!”⁠—Jane’s protest was almost shrill⁠—“you are making a mistake! You’re making one this minute! It’s a terrible mistake for you to sit there and talk as if there were anything but one thing to do!” + 

“And what’s that?” said Cicily ironically. + 

“Put Albert Lancaster out of your life immediately,” said Jane firmly. “And forget him as soon as you can.” She regretted her sharp words as soon as they were spoken. They seemed absurdly melodramatic, punctured by Cicily’s light monosyllable. + 

“Why?” + 

“Why?” echoed Jane. “Why, because you’re a married woman with three dear children and Albert’s a married man with three children of his own. Because Belle was your best friend and Jack’s always been a good and loyal husband⁠—” + 

Jane stopped for breath. + 

“Yes,” said Cicily slowly. “Jack’s always been a good and loyal husband and I’ve always been a good and loyal wife. We’ve been married nearly ten years and I’m horribly bored with him. He’s really bored with me, though, of course, he won’t admit it. It would be perfectly impossible for either of us to recapture the emotion that brought us together. It’s gone forever. The same thing is perfectly true of Belle and Albert. I’ve fallen in love with Albert. He’s fallen in love with me. I can’t see why that situation has anything to do with a dead past. I’m not robbing Jack if I give my love to Albert. Jack hasn’t had my love for years. I’m not robbing Belle if Albert gives his love to me. Belle had her innings ten years ago. I don’t grudge them to her. But it’s my turn now.” + 

“Cicily!” cried Jane in horror. “You mustn’t talk like that! You mustn’t think like that!” + 

“Why not?” said Cicily. “What are your brains given you for, except to think with? I believe in being practical. That’s why I haven’t made up my mind. There are a great many practical difficulties to consider. If I should divorce Jack⁠—” + 

“Divorce Jack?” cried Jane. + 

“And Belle should divorce Albert,” continued Cicily imperturbably, “there would still be a lot of adjustments to be made. There are the children for one thing⁠—” + 

“I’m glad you give them a passing thought,” said Jane ironically. + 

“Don’t be sarcastic, Mumsy,” smiled Cicily cheerfully. “It’s not your line. You know I adore my children. And Albert’s are sweet. The children do present complications. But perhaps we could solve them. They’re all awfully young. They’d soon get used to it. I like the lovely picture of a sweet, united home, just as much as you do, Mumsy. But our homes aren’t sweet and united. There’s no use kidding yourself that they are. But”⁠—Cicily’s young face clouded thoughtfully as she spoke⁠—“you see there’s the money.” + 

“The what?” cried Jane. This conversation was really taking on the horror of a nightmare. + 

“The money,” said Cicily. “You see we haven’t got any. Not any to speak of. Aunt Muriel made ducks and drakes of all she had during Uncle Bert’s illness. She gave a lot to Albert during those years abroad. Albert really can’t afford to run two households. Six children and two wives are no joke! He’d want to give Belle a whacking big alimony. I’d want her to have one. On the other hand, I really couldn’t take money from Jack⁠—now, could I?⁠—not even for the support of his children, if I were living with Albert. Perhaps that seems quixotic to you, Mumsy, but⁠—” + 

“Quixotic!” cried Jane. This must be a nightmare. + 

“But that’s the way I feel,” ended Cicily tranquilly. Then added abruptly, “Has it ever occurred to you, Mumsy, that Dad only gives me three thousand a year?” + 

In the midst of the horror a ridiculous impulse to vindicate Stephen rose hotly in Jane’s heart. + 

“He gave you this house and lot. He gave Jack his job in the bank!” + 

“They wouldn’t do me much good,” said Cicily calmly, “in the present crisis. I’d ruin Albert. I really would. He wants to get back into the diplomatic service. He’s trying to save a fortune. Of course, there’s Ed Brown⁠—but Albert says he really couldn’t bring himself to come down on him to pay a brand-new stepson’s wife a princely alimony! And I don’t blame him. Ed Brown does seem a trifle remote. Of course, if Dad would settle about three hundred thousand on me⁠—” + 

Jane rose from her chair. + 

“Cicily,” she said solemnly, “I wouldn’t have believed⁠—I really⁠—would⁠—not⁠—have⁠—believed⁠—that you could really shock me⁠—” + 

“You think he wouldn’t?” said Cicily anxiously. + 

Jane did not stoop to reply. She walked in silence to the door. She could hear Cicily scrambling to her feet behind her. + 

“It would fix up everything,” said Cicily, “if he would. I know lots of girls would just take that alimony and think nothing of it, but I couldn’t do it. And Albert feels just that way. We wouldn’t want Belle to give up anything. I couldn’t bear it if she had to go back with the children and live with Aunt Isabel⁠—” Strolling down the hall, she slipped her hand confidingly through Jane’s elbow. + 

“Cicily,” said Jane with dignity, “I’m not going to discuss it. If you don’t see that this talk is shocking⁠—” + 

“All right, Mumsy,” said Cicily cheerfully. “I told you you hadn’t better. But you would and you did and I’ve been perfectly frank with you.” Jane opened the front door. “See here, darling, you can’t walk home in this weather. I’ll order the car.” + 

“I don’t want the car,” said Jane pettishly. “I prefer to walk.” Her pettishness was that of an irritated old lady. It reminded her of her own mother. The storm had turned into a blizzard. Small, icy flakes were driving horizontally across the darkness in the shaft of light that shone from the front door. She could not walk, of course. Cicily had already rung for Ella. She gave her order tranquilly. Then turned to smile mischievously at Jane’s sombre face. + 

“It’s a compliment, Mumsy,” she said, “when your children are perfectly frank with you. But you won’t face facts. Your generation believes in fairies!” The hall was growing cold. Cicily closed the door. “I’m going to talk to Dad, myself, I think,” she said slowly. + 

Jane did not reply. She still had the sense of nightmare. This⁠—this would devastate Stephen. She would have to tell him. Tell Stephen⁠—who adored Cicily. Mother and daughter stood in silence until the headlights of the motor, wheeling in the darkness, were visible through the glass panel of the door. + 

“Good night,” said Cicily. Jane, still, did not reply. “Mumsy, don’t be an ass!” cried Cicily brightly. She kissed Jane very warmly. Jane clung to her for a moment in silence. “Button up your coat, dear! Don’t slip on the steps!” + 

Jane did not look back. She did not dare to, on the icy path. The wind was very strong. But Cicily’s voice floated out to her in the darkness. + 

“Don’t worry, Mumsy!” + 

The friendly chauffeur met her halfway to the car. He took her arm to steady her. Jane was suddenly reminded again of her mother. She was an old lady. Or about to become one. Useless to try to understand the younger generation. But she would have to tell Stephen. She would have to tell Stephen that night. + 

VI + 

Jane did not tell Stephen that night, however. When she rang her front doorbell, Stephen, himself, opened the door. His face looked strangely shocked and very, very serious. + 

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said simply. + 

“Stephen!” cried Jane. “Stephen, what’s happened?” + 

“I’ve had a wire from Alden,” he answered. “Father died of heart failure at his desk in the bank, at half-past three this afternoon.” + 

V + 

I + 

Jane sat, relaxed and weary, in the arms of a wing chair in the front parlour of the Carvers’ house on Beacon Street, thinking soberly of the perfect end of her father-in-law’s life. Sudden death, at eighty-eight, in his office chair. No pain, no partings, no illness nor foreboding. It was hard on the family, however. It had been a great shock to Stephen. It had been a shock to the children, curiously enough, for they had never seemed to care much for their grandfather. In latter years he had been a very irascible old gentleman. + 

Across the room, uncomfortably erect, Cicily and Jenny were perched on the slippery black horsehair upholstery of a mahogany sofa. Their bright young blondness was accentuated by their sombre mourning. They looked subdued and preternaturally grave, however. Stephen, who seemed, Jane thought, unspeakably tired, was sitting in a stiff-backed Sheraton chair in the middle of the room, absently staring over his daughters’ heads at a large steel engraving, The Return of the Mayflower, that hung over the mahogany sofa. Young Steve was standing by the white marble mantelpiece. His eyes were wandering, with a faint twinkle of amusement, from the glass dome of wax flowers on top of it to the great jar of dried grasses, combined with peacock feathers, that adorned the hearth at his feet. Mrs. Carver never had a fire in the front parlour. Jane knew he was longing for a cigarette and hoped he would refrain from lighting one. Old Mr. Carver had never held with cigarettes⁠—“coffin nails,” he had called them⁠—and Mrs. Carver only allowed Alden to smoke his in the big brown library that overlooked the river. + 

Alden himself was pacing up and down the room, skirting the old mahogany rockers and marble-topped tables and plush-covered footstools with care. The furniture in the Carvers’ front parlour was oddly assorted. The Colonial period rubbed elbows with the Victorian age. There were several good eighteenth-century pieces that had been in the family for generations and, mingled with them, were the rosewood parlour suite that Mrs. Carver had bought in the first year of her marriage, and a triple-tiered black walnut whatnot that had been left to Mr. Carver in the will of a favourite sister, and an old cerise plush armchair, with a fringe of braided tassels, where Mr. Carver always used to sit, and a large glass cabinet of Chinese Chippendale design, in which were displayed a collection of curios assembled by long-dead Carvers in the course of their voyages on the whale-ships and merchantmen that had carried them over the seven seas⁠—ivory pie-cutters and paper-knives and bodkins, a set of Chinese beads which included a jade necklace that Cicily had always coveted, a tiny model of a clipper ship, miraculously erect in a small-necked rum bottle, tortoiseshell snuffboxes, ebony chessmen, sandalwood fans, a bronze Javanese gong of intricate pattern, and a small marble replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Also a first edition of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s The School Boy, personally autographed and inscribed to Mr. Carver by Mr. Holmes. + 

Jane liked the funny cluttered room, however. She liked the old incongruous furniture and the silly curios and The Return of the Mayflower. She liked the sense of the past that curiously consecrated this ridiculous collection of inanimate objects that people had cared for and loved. No modern decorator could catch it, she thought, no matter how passionate his preoccupation with antiquity. + 

“Where is Mother?” said Alden suddenly. + 

Alden seemed a trifle out of humour. Tired, of course. Fearfully tired. They had all just returned from the service in the cemetery and Mrs. Carver had gone upstairs with Silly to take off her bonnet, in preparation for the Reading of the Will, in the front parlour. The Reading of the Will was a ceremony that all proper Carvers felt should follow a burial as day follows dawn. Jane had thought, considering how exhausted they all were and how long that Unitarian minister had prayed his impromptu prayers, that it would be just as well to defer it until the next morning. But Alden, as head of the family, had been adamant. And Mrs. Carver had thought it would be only correct. And Stephen had said that they might as well get it over. And Silly had murmured that it did not seem quite respectful to wait. + 

As Alden spoke, Mrs. Carver and Silly came into the parlour. Her mother-in-law, at eighty-four, Jane thought, was a very miraculous old lady. What a strain she had been under, what a shock she had sustained⁠—the tragic termination of sixty-three years of marriage! Yet Mrs. Carver, as she entered the room, looked just as she had looked for the last ten years. She wore her familiar house gown of loose black silk. Mrs. Carver thought extremes were very foolish. She had not gone in for widow’s weeds. Her little white collar was fastened by a mourning pin of black jet. It was the only concession she had made to the solemnity of the day. She had told Jane, before setting out for the cemetery, that she had worn that pin to the funeral of her mother in eighteen-seventy-nine. Beneath the straight parting of her thin white hair, her face looked only a little tired and rather worried than sad. Jane soon saw what was worrying her. She walked straight across the room and pulled down one window shade until it was even with the other. A grief-stricken parlour maid, Jane thought with a smile, in raising them after the family had left the house for the funeral, had had no thought for the critical eyes across Beacon Street. Mrs. Carver turned and faced her family. + 

“Alden,” she said, “you look tired. Would you like a glass of port?” + 

Alden shook his head. He produced an imposing-looking document from the inside pocket of his cutaway. + 

“Stephen,” continued Mrs. Carver, “you’re not comfortable in that stiff chair. You’d better take your father’s. Sit down, Steve, and don’t fidget about.” She had seated herself, as she spoke, in the seat that Stephen had abandoned. Jane rose, with a gesture toward her own armchair. “No, Jane, I like a straight back. Now, Alden, find a nice place for yourself with a good light. Silly! Turn on the lamp for Alden. Can you see, dear? Then I think we’re quite ready.” + 

As Alden unfolded his imposing document, Silly sank down on a footstool beside his chair, her lank figure relaxed in lines of complete fatigue. In the folds of her new mourning Silly really looked as old as Mrs. Carver, thought Jane. Her hair was just as white and her face infinitely more weary. Two old ladies⁠—mother and daughter! It was a shame about Silly. She had never had a life. She had never even achieved one carefree summer with Susan Frothingham, one trip abroad alone, one spree, one careless burst of freedom to enjoy and remember. Susan Frothingham had been dead for seven years, carried off by a gust of pneumonia in the flu epidemic of nineteen-twenty. It was a shame about Silly. But Alden was clearing his throat. He was looking at them all very solemnly through his pince-nez eyeglasses over the top of the imposing document. + 

The assembled Carvers stirred a trifle uneasily. A faint, tense thrill seemed to run around the room. The best, the most grief-stricken of families, Jane thought with a smile, were not quite impervious to the dramatic suspense of the moment in which a will is read. But Alden was speaking. + 

“I was made the executor of this will,” he was saying, and surely there was a hint of irritation in his voice, “but I never knew anything about its contents until yesterday morning, when I found it in Father’s safety-deposit box. He made it twelve years ago, just after Uncle Stephen’s death.” + 

Alden paused to adjust his eyeglasses, and again the assembled Carvers stirred a trifle uneasily. A dreadful phrase from the pen of John Galsworthy flashed through Jane’s mind. “Old Soames Forsyte would cut up a very warm man.” Old Mr. Carver would cut up a very warm man, also. But Jane felt curiously detached from the provisions of his testament. Stephen had more money, now, than Jane could spend the income on. And a Carver would always leave his fortune to Carvers. Soon Stephen would have too much money. Too much money to leave, in his turn, to his children. But that day, fortunately, thought Jane with a glance at Cicily, would not come soon. But Alden had resumed. + 

“The first provision, I am happy to say and you will all be happy to hear”⁠—Alden’s voice had brightened a trifle⁠—“is the foundation of a trust fund of one hundred thousand dollars for Aunt Marie, the interest on which is to continue the allowance that Father had been making her since the death of Uncle Stephen, the principal to go, on her death, to Harvard College, to form the nucleus of a Stephen Carver Memory Fund, the purpose of which will be to purchase books and manuscripts for the Department of Reformation Drama, of which Uncle Stephen so long held the chair.” + 

Why, Alden was making a speech, thought Jane irreverently, as the Carvers about her moved and murmured their gratified approbation. But that was nice for Aunt Marie. She was a bedridden old lady, now, in a Cambridge flat. “I must remember,” thought Jane to herself, “to go to see her tomorrow.” But Alden was again speaking. + 

Jane listened, absently, to the elaborate phrases that rolled from his lips. He was reading from the document, now, and it was all frightfully legal. Jane caught the gist of it, however. It was quite as she had thought. A Carver would always leave his fortune to Carvers. The estate was large, but no larger than Jane had expected. It was a simple will. Jane automatically checked off the bequests in her mind as they were read. + 

One million dollars outright to Alden and one million dollars outright to Stephen. One million dollars left in trust with Alden and Stephen, the income of which was to be expended on Mrs. Carver for her lifetime and to be expended on Silly after her death. Poor old Silly! How like Mr. Carver to leave sixty-year-old Silly⁠—not a nickel outright, but a deferred million in trust! Alden’s voice was rolling on. + 

It was the wish of the testator that Mrs. Carver should keep up the Beacon Street house and the place at Gull Rocks just as they had been kept in the testator’s lifetime, and that Silly should keep them up after her death. On the death of Silly, Alden, and Stephen, both houses were to go to young Steve, “the last perpetuator of the Carver name.” When all debts were paid and some minor bequests to the servants attended to, the residue of the estate, if any, was to be divided between Mr. Carver’s three grandchildren, Cicily, Jenny, and Steve. + 

A proper Carver will, thought Jane. And exactly like her father-in-law. One hundred thousand dollars to Harvard College and three million to Carvers. All debts paid, poor relations pensioned, old servants remembered, and Silly ignored. Exactly like her father-in-law. Jane hoped that Silly would come into the income of that million before she was seventy. She hoped she would make ducks and drakes of it when she did. But no⁠—she would undoubtedly save it for Stephen’s children. For Silly was a Carver. + 

At all events, the will did not affect her life, thought Jane. She felt curiously indifferent to the possession of that added million. There was a little awkward pause when Alden had finished speaking. It was broken by Mrs. Carver. + 

“Thank you, Alden,” she said simply. + 

“I never realized,” said Silly⁠—and her voice was slightly shaken⁠—“I never realized that Father had so much money.” + 

“Why should you have realized it?” said Mrs. Carver sharply. “Money is not to be spoken of.” Mrs. Carver still talked to Silly as if she were a child. Her dignified reproof put a sudden quietus on further discussion of the will. + 

“I’m going to take a walk,” declared Steve abruptly. + 

Cicily’s and Jenny’s eyes met his. Cicily, Jane thought, looked a trifle downcast. The three children rose simultaneously to their feet. + 

“We’ll go with you,” said Jenny. + 

“Don’t be late for supper,” said Mrs. Carver. She smiled very kindly up at Silly, who had risen from the footstool and was standing patiently by her chair. “I think I’ll lie down now, but I don’t feel like sleeping, I wish you’d come up and read the Transcript to me, Silly.” + 

Mother and daughter left the room. The children turned toward the door. + 

“It’s all right for them to go, isn’t it, Stephen?” asked Jane. “I mean⁠—it won’t create a scandal if anyone sees them carousing up Beacon Street?” + 

“Well⁠—I shouldn’t advise them to carouse,” smiled Stephen. + 

“I should hope not!” put in Alden. + 

“We won’t carouse!” twinkled Jenny. “We’ll walk very discreetly.” + 

“We’ll walk lugubriously,” said Steve cheerfully, “if Uncle Alden thinks we’d better.” + 

Alden did not stoop to reply. + 

“Get along with you!” said Stephen, still smiling. When they had left the room, however, and he had turned to Alden, his face was very grave. Alden was folding up the document and putting it back into the inside pocket of his cutaway. Stephen walked over to him and stood for a moment at his side in silence. Then, “I’m sorry, Alden,” he said. + 

Caught by the gravity of his tone, Jane looked quickly up at him. Alden did not speak for a moment. When he did, his voice was thickened with emotion. + 

“Father⁠—Father wasn’t quite himself these last years. If he had been he would have realized.” + 

“Of course he would,” said Stephen warmly. + 

“He would have changed it,” said Alden, still in that thickened voice. + 

“What are you talking about?” cried Jane sharply. She rose from her chair as she spoke and walked to Stephen’s side. + 

“We⁠—we’ve rather walked off with the lion’s share, Jane,” said Stephen quietly. “We and ours.” + 

“I don’t understand,” said Jane. + 

Alden turned on her almost belligerently. + 

“Don’t you know what bank stocks have been doing in the last ten years?” he inquired angrily. “Since Father made that will the estate’s doubled. In nineteen-fifteen the residue was worth about fifty thousand dollars. And now your children are going to come into a cool three million⁠—or nearly that.” + 

He stopped abruptly. He stared, astonished, at Jane’s horrified face. + 

“Stephen,” she said faintly, “Stephen⁠—that’s not true, is it?” + 

Stephen nodded gravely. + 

“It’s rather rough on Alden⁠—and on Silly, too, of course.” + 

Then he, too, stopped, for Jane had suddenly begun to cry. + 

“Oh, Stephen⁠—Stephen⁠—can’t anything be done?” + 

“I’m afraid not, darling.” His arms were around her. She was sobbing rather wildly. + 

“Don’t take it like that, Jane,” said Alden kindly. He pulled himself together. “It⁠—it’s not so very important.” + 

“You don’t know!” cried Jane. “You don’t know⁠—anything about it!” + 

Alden let that insult pass unchallenged. He was rapidly revising his opinion of his sister-in-law. She had never seemed to him an hysterical woman. But this stroke of luck had quite unbalanced her. + 

“You don’t know anything!” she kept repeating. “You don’t know anything, either of you! You don’t know anything at all!” + 

II + 

On looking back on the first few weeks that followed her father-in-law’s death, Jane was always most impressed by the astounding efficiency of her children. The explosive efficiency of her children. Jane felt as if the dead hand of Mr. Carver had pulled the corks from the three bottles of extremely effervescent champagne. Event followed event with catastrophic rapidity. + 

It was young Steve who threw the first bomb. He threw it in Boston the day after his grandfather’s funeral, just two hours after he had heard of his legacy. He walked in abruptly on Alden and Stephen and Jane, who were discussing the questions of inheritance tax and probate in the old brown library that overlooked the river. + 

“The contents of both houses must be appraised immediately,” Alden was saying, when his nephew entered the room. + 

“Am I interrupting?” said Steve amiably. “I want to ask Uncle Alden a question.” + 

“I’ve told you everything I know about that bequest already,” said Alden, with that faint hint of irritation in his tone. + 

“This isn’t about the bequest,” said Steve cheerfully. “And it’s a very simple question. Have you got a job for me?” + 

“A job for you?” echoed Alden. + 

“Yes. In the Bay State Trust Company. I want to live here.” + 

“Here?” echoed Jane. + 

“Well, not in this house,” said Steve calmly. “Though I like that view of the river. But in Boston. I’ve always loved Boston. I think it’s the place for Carvers to live.” + 

“You’re right there, my boy,” put in Alden approvingly. + 

“I’ve just been taking,” said Steve⁠—and his eye brightened⁠—“a walk around Beacon Hill. You don’t know what it does to me, Mumsy. I simply love it. It’s the call of the blood or something. I’m going to buy a little old redbrick house on Chestnut or Mount Vernon Street⁠—a little old redbrick house with a white front door and a bright brass knocker and lavender-tinted panes of old glass in its front window. I’m going to buy the best old stuff I can get to furnish it with. It’s going to be⁠—well⁠—if not an American Wing, at least an American Lean-to! The Metropolitan is going to envy me some of my pieces. I’m going to have a good cook and a better cellar and give delightful little parties. I’m going to be Boston’s Most Desirable Bachelor. But I’m not going to end up like Uncle Alden!” Steve paused to smile engagingly at his astounded relatives. “On my twenty-ninth birthday, I’m going to marry the season’s most eligible débutante⁠—and her name will be Cabot or Lodge or Lowell⁠—and replenish the dwindling Carver stock, I’m going to have ten children in the good old New England tradition, and marry them all off to the best Back Bay connections. There! That’s a brief résumé of my earthly plans and ambitions. But in the meantime, I need a job. I’d rather be in Grandfather’s bank than in any other. So I thought if Uncle Alden had a high stool vacant, I’d just put in a bid for it. If not⁠—” + 

But Alden’s face was shining with approbation. + 

“Of course I have, Steve!” he said warmly. “And I must say this would have delighted your grandfather! Wouldn’t it have delighted him, Stephen?” + 

Jane looked quickly at Stephen’s face. Her own sense of defeat was clearly written there. + 

“I suppose it would have,” he said slowly. “But, just the same, Steve’s really a Westerner. Partly by blood and wholly by upbringing⁠—” + 

Jane loved him for his words. Alden looked pained. + 

“Do you call an education at Milton and Harvard a Western upbringing?” he inquired with acerbity. + 

Stephen laughed shortly. + 

“I suppose we should have sent him to the high school in Lakewood,” he said a trifle bitterly. + 

“And to some freshwater college?” inquired Alden. “Don’t be absurd, Stephen!” + 

“You don’t need me, Dad, in the Midland Loan and Trust Company,” said Steve persuasively. “You’ve got Jack.” + 

“I want you, nevertheless,” said Stephen soberly. + 

“But I want this, Dad,” said Steve. He walked to the window as he spoke and gazed out over the back yards of Beacon Street and the sparkling blue river toward the grey domes and cornices of the Tech buildings across the basin. “I⁠—want⁠—this. I want to live forever in sight of that little gold dome that tops Beacon Hill. I know what I want, Dad⁠—” + 

“In that case,” said Stephen dryly, “you’ll probably get it. Carvers usually do. Male Carvers, that is⁠—” + 

Jane knew he was thinking of wasted Silly. + 

“I’m sorry for your wife, Steve,” she commented tartly. + 

“Oh⁠—she’ll like it,” said Steve easily. “I’ll pick one that will.” + 

It was all arranged with Alden in the next half-hour. + 

“Darling,” said Jane, as she left the room with Stephen, “perhaps he’ll tire of it. Perhaps he’ll come home.” She tried to make her weary voice ring clear with conviction. But she knew he wouldn’t. Stephen knew it, too. He had nothing to add to the arguments he had been vainly propounding for the last half-hour. + 

“Jane⁠—you’re a trump!” was all he said. + 

III + 

It was on the Twentieth Century, three days later, that Jenny issued her ultimatum. The female Carvers in the rising generation yielded nothing in determination to the male. Jane and Stephen were sitting in their compartment, looking out at the bleak midwinter landscape of the Berkshire Hills, when she thrust her blonde head around their door. + 

“They’ve had a lot of snow,” Stephen was just saying absently. He had been saying things like that, very absently and at long intervals, ever since the train had pulled out of the Back Bay Station. Jane was terribly sorry for him. + 

“What are you two doing?” cried Jenny very gaily. “Holding hands, as I live and breathe! You look like a coloured lithograph of The Golden Wedding! Something that comes out with the Sunday Supplement!” She perched lightly on the arm of the Pullman seat and dropped a casual kiss on Jane’s hair. “Now, listen, darlings,” she continued brightly. “I’ve got something to tell you. I don’t know if you’ll like it, but it has to be told.” + 

Jane looked up in alarm at Jenny’s cheerful countenance. + 

“Jenny,” she said quickly, “if it’s anything unpleasant⁠—” + 

“It’s not really unpleasant, Mumsy,” said Jenny reassuringly. Then with a shrug of resignation, “But I rather think you’ll hate it. Last night in Boston I wrote Barbara Belmont.” + 

“About what?” said Jane sharply. + 

“About my legacy,” returned Jenny calmly. “I told her to look around for those kennels in Westchester County. I told her that, if she could square her family, I’d take a little apartment with her this spring in New York. Then we could buy the dogs and fix over the house⁠—I hope we can find an old one⁠—and move out the end of June. I thought we could spend the summer in Westchester and get to know our business and move back into the New York apartment in November⁠—What’s the matter, Mumsy?” She stopped to stare in astonishment down into Jane’s agitated face. + 

“What’s the matter?” roared Stephen. His tone was really a roar, “Don’t talk nonsense, Jenny! You two girls can’t go off on your own and live by yourselves in a shack in the country and a flat in New York! Bill Belmont will never listen to you! It’s perfectly preposterous! It isn’t safe! Kids like you⁠—” + 

“I’m twenty-six years old, Dad,” said Jenny evenly. “And I’ve just come into eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars⁠—” + 

“Jenny!” said Jane warningly. + 

“But I have, Mumsy,” said Jenny reasonably. “And it makes all the difference. You’re just like Grandma Carver! You think it’s vulgar to talk of money. Well⁠—I’m not talking of money. I’m talking of freedom. Sometimes I think they are one and the same thing. Look at Aunt Silly! Just look at Aunt Silly! What tied her hands, I want to know, but the purse-strings?” Jenny paused to glare triumphantly at her parents. Then went on truculently: “If you think I’m going to grow old into that kind of a spinster, you’re very much mistaken! Not with eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars! If you think I’m vulgar⁠—” + 

“Jenny,” said Jane gently, “I don’t think you’re vulgar.” She paused for a moment, trying helplessly to define just what she thought Jenny was. It was very difficult, however. That reference to Silly had taken the wind out of Jane’s sails. Jenny immediately took advantage of her pause. + 

“Barbara and I have wanted to do this thing together ever since we left Bryn Mawr! We’ve waited five years. Five years ought to convince you and the Belmonts that we know what we’re talking about. We’re not marrying women⁠—at least we never have been⁠—we’re not interested in husbands⁠—we’re interested in ourselves⁠—” + 

“Jenny,” said Jane very seriously, “that sort of mutually inclusive and exclusive friendship with another girl is not very wise. It doesn’t lead to anything. It⁠—” She paused again, as Stephen pressed her fingers. He was right, of course. Better not say too much. But⁠— + 

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Jenny was exclaiming disgustedly. “You make me tired! There’s nothing mutually inclusive and exclusive about Barbara and me! Do you think we’re going to dig a little Well of Loneliness? We’re not! We’re going to raise dogs! We’re going to get out from under our families! We don’t want to marry until we meet a man we fancy! In the meantime we want to be independent. If we were sons, you’d think it was all right for us to run dog kennels.” + 

“I shouldn’t,” put in Stephen abruptly. “If a son of mine wanted to run dog kennels, I’d think he was a damn fool!” + 

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion,” said Jenny very sweetly. “I like dogs. I like them, on the whole, rather better than people. I’m never going to go to another dance. I’m never going to go to another Lakewood dinner-party. I’m going to mess around in dirty tweeds in that heavenly country for eight months of the year and live very smartly in New York for the other four. I’m going to enjoy myself, as I haven’t since I left the Bryn Mawr campus. I⁠—” + 

“Jenny,” said Jane, “I think we’ve had about enough of this Emancipation Proclamation. Your father and I are very tired. We’ve had a bad week.” + 

“Of course you have!” Jenny’s young face was suddenly alight with sympathy. “You know, Mumsy, it’s awfully hard to realize that your grandfather is your father’s father. It’s hard to realize, I mean, that Dad is just as cut up as I should be if he⁠—if he had dropped dead at his office desk. That would kill me, Dad, it really would⁠—” Jenny paused to look across Jane very fondly at Stephen. Jane, in her turn, promptly took advantage of the pause. + 

“Yet you want to live in Westchester?” + 

“Dad wanted to live in Chicago,” said Jenny. + 

“That was different,” said Jane. + 

“Why was it different?” flashed Jenny. She rose to her feet as she spoke. + 

Jane had not thought of the answer to her question before Jenny stood at the door of the compartment. + 

“Why was it different, Stephen?” she asked, when they were once more alone. + 

“Because she is a girl,” said Stephen promptly. + 

That was not the answer, thought Jane dumbly, her heart vaguely stirred, perhaps, by the old doctrines of President M. Carey Thomas. That was not the answer. Was the answer that now Stephen was a parent and that then he had been a child? Was that where all the difference lay? But no⁠—this generation was something else again⁠—it was rude⁠—it was ruthless⁠—it was completely self-confident. But self-confidence was a virtue. Not entirely an attractive virtue, however. More than the purse-strings had tied poor Silly’s hands. Intangible scruples. The bonds of affection. Some inner grace. Jane sat a long time in silence, her fingers once more slipped comfortingly into Stephen’s hand. A silence that was eventually broken by her husband. + 

“The Hudson’s frozen over,” said Stephen absently. + 

His voice recalled Jane from the little hell of worry in which she had been blindly revolving. Stephen did not yet know about Cicily. She would have to tell him. But not now. Stephen had had enough. + 

“Why, so it is!” said Jane. + 

IV + 

Jane sat in the window of the Lakewood living-room, cross-stitching little brown and scarlet robins on a bib that she was making for Robin Redbreast’s fourth Christmas. The Skokie Valley was a plain of spotless white. The sun was high and the sky was blue and the bare boughs of the oak trees were outlined with a crust of silvery snow that was melting, a little, in the heat of the December noon. Jenny was stretched on the sofa, intent on the pages of The American Kennels Gazette. She was investigating the state of the market on Russian wolf hounds. + 

It was Saturday and Stephen would soon be home for luncheon. Young Steve was staying late at the bank. He was winding up his affairs there very conscientiously, preparatory to his departure for Boston on the New Year. + 

“Mumsy,” said Jenny presently. + 

“Yes,” said Jane. + 

“Has it occurred to you that Dad’s looking rather off his feed? Since we came home from Boston, I mean?” + 

“Yes,” said Jane soberly, “it has.” + 

“Why don’t you go off together somewhere⁠—take a trip to Egypt or a Mediterranean cruise?” + 

“Dad couldn’t leave the bank,” said Jane shortly. “And I wouldn’t want to leave you children.” + 

“It seems to me,” said Jenny cheerfully, “that we children are leaving you.” + 

“Cicily isn’t,” said Jane with equal cheerfulness. “And we have the grandchildren.” + 

“Mumsy,” said Jenny earnestly, “do you know I think parents make a mistake to count so much on their children? I think you and Dad ought to have more fun on your own. When you were young, Mumsy, weren’t you ever bored with Lakewood? Didn’t you want to see the world?” + 

“Yes, I was,” said Jane honestly. “I wanted to see the world.” + 

“Well, then, why don’t you?” said Jenny eagerly. “Why don’t you, now you can?” + 

“But I can’t,” said Jane. + 

“Why not?” said Jenny. + 

“Because I’m needed here,” said Jane a trifle tartly. + 

“That’s just nonsense,” said Jenny very reasonably. “What do you do here that couldn’t be left undone?” + 

On that outrageous question Jane heard Stephen’s latchkey. He opened the front door and walked across the hall to hang up his hat and coat. His step, Jane thought, was just a little heavy. He smiled a trifle absently at his wife and daughter, from the living-room door. + 

“Am I late?” he asked. + 

“No. Just in time,” said Jane. She rose to touch the bell as she spoke. + 

Stephen did look off his feed. He looked as if something were worrying him. Something more than Jenny and Steve. He had looked just that way for the last ten days⁠—ever since their return from his father’s funeral. He had had almost nothing to say on the further chimerical development of Jenny’s and Steve’s plans for emancipation. Jane, sensing his preoccupation, had said nothing about Cicily. And Cicily, amazingly, had said nothing about herself. She had accepted the news of her legacy in Boston with incredulous joy. But she had made no comment on her domestic situation. She had returned to the little French farmhouse in silence. She had brought her children three times to see Jane. In their presence, of course, discussion of her predicament⁠—if wilful wrongdoing could be called a predicament⁠—was impossible. Jane had almost begun to hope, against hope, that Cicily had recognized the error of her ways. That financial freedom had brought emotional enlightenment. That as soon as the door was opened, Cicily had realized that she did not want to leave home. Perhaps she would never have to tell Stephen. Or tell him, at least, only of an evil that had been avoided, a peril that had been escaped, a sin that had been atoned. + 

“Luncheon is served, madam,” said the waitress. + 

Jenny chatted pleasantly of the charms of Russian wolf hounds while they sat at table. Stephen toyed with his chop, picked at his salad, and ignored his soufflé. + 

“I want to talk to your mother,” he said abruptly, when they had reentered the living-room. + 

“About me?” smiled Jenny. “What have I done?” + 

But Stephen did not smile. + 

“Run along, dear,” said Jane. + 

Jenny picked up The American Kennels Gazette and left the room. Jane turned inquiringly toward Stephen. He had seated himself in his armchair near the fire. He sat for some time in silence, gazing abstractedly at the blazing logs. + 

“Well, dear?” ventured Jane presently. + 

“I don’t know how to begin,” said Stephen soberly. He had not raised his eyes from the fire. + 

“Stephen!” cried Jane in alarm. She sat down on the arm of his chair. “Stephen, what is it?” + 

“It’s going to be a shock to you,” said Stephen. “It was a great shock to me. I’ve known it for ten days and I haven’t known how to tell you. Cicily is going to divorce Jack.” + 

“Stephen!” cried Jane, aghast. Then, “Who told you?” + 

“Cicily,” said Stephen. “She came down to my office in the bank the day after we came home from Boston. I hope I handled her right, Jane⁠—” Stephen’s face was terribly troubled. + 

“What did you do?” asked Jane. + 

“I lost my temper,” said Stephen simply. “I hit the ceiling. She said she wanted to marry Albert Lancaster and I said we would never allow it⁠—that she was disgraceful⁠—that⁠—” + 

“And what did she do?” asked Jane. + 

“She went away,” said Stephen. “She kissed me and went away. This morning she came back again.” + 

“Yes?” said Jane breathlessly. + 

“She came back,” said Stephen slowly, “to say that everything was settled. Belle and Jack have consented. Albert talked to Robin this morning. Belle’s going to Reno in January⁠—” + 

“Oh, Stephen!” cried Jane. + 

“And Cicily’s sailing for Paris next week.” + 

“Next week!” cried Jane. + 

“Next week,” said Stephen. “She says she wants to spend Christmas Day on the boat⁠—because of the children, you know. She does⁠—she does think of the children, Jane⁠—” + 

Stephen’s voice was faltering. + 

“Stephen,” said Jane very solemnly, “this just can’t be. We’ve got to stop her.” + 

“You try,” said Stephen grimly. + 

Just then Jane heard the doorbell. + 

“I don’t want to see anyone, Irma!” she called to the waitress. + 

But when the front door opened, Jane heard Isabel’s voice. Her sister’s quick step crossed the hall. + 

“Jane!” she called sharply. “Jane! Stephen!” + 

Jane exchanged one long look with Stephen. + 

“This is going to be perfectly terrible,” she said. Then, “Here we are, Isabel!” + 

Isabel appeared in the living-room door. Her eyes were red and her worn, round face was swollen. She must have been crying all the way out from town in her car. She still held a damp little handkerchief, twisted into a tight, round ball in her hand. + 

“What did I tell you, Jane?” was the first thing she said. + 

“Isabel, darling,” said Jane, “come in and sit down and help us. We’re trying to decide what we must do.” + 

“What you must do!” cried Isabel. “You must stop Cicily!” + 

“How?” said Jane. + 

“I don’t care,” said Isabel, “as long as you stop her!” She sank down on a sofa near the fire. She looked accusingly up at Jane. “You know I saw what was coming, Jane. I warned you. But of course I never really knew⁠—I never even imagined anything like this could happen until Belle came in this morning and told me all about it. It was dreadful, Jane, for Mamma was there. Belle never thought of her⁠—of how, I mean, we’d have to break it to her. Belle’s like me⁠—she speaks right out. And Mamma was awful, Jane. It was a terrible shock to her and she went all to pieces.” + 

“What do you mean?” asked Jane anxiously. “What did she do?” + 

“Talked,” said Isabel briefly. “She rather sought refuge in the old-time religion. She thinks Cicily’s damned⁠—utterly damned. And she told Belle she was worse than Cicily for condoning sin, in cold blood. For letting Albert off, I mean. For going to Reno. And that knocked Belle up. She’d been very calm and controlled before. And she began to cry⁠—she just cried her heart out, Jane! I had to send for Minnie to take Mamma away, so I could talk to Belle. And then Robin came home. He was utterly shattered. He’d just had the most awful, heartless interview with Albert in his office. About settlements, I mean, and horrible, final things like that. I’d just got Belle quiet, but that set her off again. She’s simply distracted, Jane⁠—and we tried to get hold of Jack, but he wasn’t at the bank and he wasn’t out here in Lakewood. And I didn’t want any lunch, so I just left Belle with Robin and came straight to talk to you and Stephen. You must stop Cicily!” Isabel paused for breath. + 

“Poor⁠—little⁠—Belle,” said Stephen, slowly. “Poor young kid!” + 

“Isabel⁠—” said Jane impulsively, then paused. After a moment she went on, however. “I think that’s very fine of Belle⁠—to let Albert go, I mean. Do you know⁠—does she⁠—does she really love him?” + 

“Does she love him?” cried Isabel indignantly. “Of course she loves him! She married him, didn’t she?” + 

“Yes,” said Jane slowly. “She married him. But⁠—” + 

“And she’s got three lovely children. Of course she loves him. And Jack loves Cicily. He really does, Jane, though I don’t see how he can. He loves her and he adores his babies and⁠—” + 

“I know,” said Jane. “I know. I’d always count on Jack.” + 

“I just can’t realize it,” said Isabel. “A double scandal like this in our family! In our family, Jane. I feel as if it weren’t possible⁠—as if I must be dreaming. When will you see Cicily?” + 

“Now,” said Jane. She rose decisively to her feet as she spoke. “Will you come, Stephen?” + 

Stephen shook his head very soberly. + 

“You’d get on better without me, Jane. I said my say to Cicily this morning. I don’t know that she’ll ever want to see me again. Not this afternoon, at any rate.” + 

Bending over the back of his armchair, Jane kissed his grey hair very tenderly. + 

“Then you stay here with Isabel,” she said. + 

V + 

“But Cicily,” said Jane, half an hour later, “have you never heard of conduct?” She was sitting hand in hand with her daughter on the sofa in the little French drawing-room. + 

“I have,” said Cicily firmly, “and I think I’m conducting myself very well!” The child’s young voice rang true with conviction. + 

“How can you think that, Cicily?” said Jane sadly. “I’m not asking you to consider your father or me, or your grandmother, or your Aunt Isabel, or your Uncle Robin. But leaving us all out of it, you’re wrecking ten lives.” + 

“Meaning Albert’s and Belle’s and Jack’s and mine and the lives of all six children?” smiled Cicily. “Mumsy, don’t be hysterical!” + 

“But you are, Cicily,” said Jane. “You’re wrecking them all for your own individual pleasure. You’re utterly selfish. You don’t care what havoc you make⁠—” + 

“I’m not making havoc!” cried Cicily indignantly. “I’m not making havoc, any more than a surgeon is who performs a necessary operation. No one likes operations. They’re very unpleasant. But they save lives. People cry and carry on, but later they’re glad they had them. It takes time, of course, to get over a major incision. But you wait, Mumsy. In two years’ time we’ll all be a great deal happier. A great deal happier than we’ve been for years.” + 

“You will, perhaps,” said Jane. “And possibly Albert. But what about Jack and Belle?” + 

“Don’t talk about Belle!” cried Cicily contemptuously. + 

“I have to talk about her,” said Jane very seriously. “You have to think of her. You’re doing her a great wrong.” + 

“Mumsy,” cried Cicily, “you are not civilized. You have the morals of the Stone Age! You really have! I’m not wronging Belle! She doesn’t love Albert. She just wants to hang on to him because she doesn’t love anyone else! If she did, she’d be all smiles. No one likes to be left, Mumsy, but if Belle were doing the leaving⁠—” + 

“But she’s not,” said Jane firmly. “Facts are facts. Belle says she loves her husband.” + 

“Well, she’s never said that to me,” said Cicily. “And she’s never had the nerve to say it to Albert either. Do you know what she said to Albert?” Cicily’s voice was rising excitedly. “She told Albert to take me for his mistress. She told Albert she didn’t care what he did, if he wouldn’t ask for divorce!” + 

“She was thinking of the children,” said Jane defensively. + 

“Bunk!” said Cicily succinctly. She rose, as she spoke, from the little French sofa. “It would be fine for my children, wouldn’t it? A situation like that? Jack’s been great about it, Mumsy. He really has. He didn’t talk like that.” + 

“Where is he?” said Jane. “I’d like to speak to him.” + 

“He moved out yesterday,” said Cicily calmly. “He’s living at the University Club.” + 

“Oh, Cicily!” said Jane pitifully. + 

For the first time in this distressing interview, Cicily herself seemed slightly shaken. She walked across the room and stood with her back to Jane, fingering the white and yellow heads of the jonquils and narcissus in the window-boxes. Her hands were trembling a little. + 

“I won’t say, Mumsy,” she said⁠—and her voice was slightly tremulous⁠—“I won’t say that it wasn’t a bad moment when he left this house. But it’s always a bad moment when you go up to the operating room. And for divorce they can’t give you ether. I wish they could. I wish we could all just go to sleep and wake up when it was safely over.” She turned from the window-boxes to face her mother. “It will be safely over, Mumsy. I’m not going to weaken. I’m not going to be sentimental.” She took her stand on the hearthrug and looked firmly at Jane. “It’s utter nonsense to think that if you love one man you can be happy living with another. You don’t understand that, Mumsy, because you’ve always loved Dad. There never was anyone else. If there had been⁠—” Cicily’s voice trailed suddenly off into silence. She was staring at Jane. “Mumsy!” she cried quickly. “Don’t tell me there ever was anyone else? Mumsy! was there?” + 

“Yes,” said Jane soberly. Suddenly she felt very near to Cicily. It seemed important to tell her the whole truth. “Yes. There was.” + 

Cicily’s face was alight with sympathy. “Before Dad, Mumsy⁠—or after?” + 

Jane suddenly felt that the whole truth could not be told. “B-before,” she said. + 

Cicily looked at her. “And after, Mumsy? Never after?” + 

Jane’s eyes fell before her daughter’s. “Once,” she said. + 

“Mumsy!” cried Cicily. “Tell me! I never⁠—” + 

“I don’t want to tell you,” said Jane. + 

“Did you tell Dad?” + 

“No,” said Jane. + 

“Mumsy!” cried Cicily. “Did you really deceive him?” + 

“I deceived him,” said Jane soberly. + 

“My God!” said Cicily. “When and how?” + 

“Oh, long ago,” said Jane. “And just as everyone else does, I suppose. I loved a man who loved me. And when he told me, I told him. And I⁠—I said I’d go away with him. But I didn’t.” + 

“What next?” said Cicily. + 

“Nothing next,” said Jane. + 

“Was that all?” said Cicily. + 

“Yes,” said Jane. + 

“You didn’t go away with him, nor⁠—nor⁠—you know, Mumsy⁠—you didn’t⁠—without going away?” + 

“I didn’t.” + 

“You just loved him, and didn’t?” + 

“Yes.” + 

“And you call that deception?” + 

“I call that deception,” said Jane. + 

Cicily’s eyes were unbelievably twinkling. “Mumsy,” she said, “is that all the story?” + 

“That’s all the story,” said Jane. + 

Cicily drew a long breath. “Well, I believe you,” she said. “But I don’t know why I do. Resisted temptations become lost opportunities, Mumsy. Haven’t you always regretted it?” + 

“I’ve never regretted it,” said Jane. + 

“Not the loving, of course,” said Cicily, “but the not going away.” + 

“Not that either,” said Jane. + 

“Mumsy,” said Cicily, “you are simply incredible. You are not civilized. You have the morals of the Stone Age! I should think an experience like that would make you see how wise I am to take my happiness⁠—” + 

“You don’t achieve happiness,” said Jane very seriously, “by taking it.” + 

“How do you know?” said Cicily promptly. “You never tried!” + 

“I’ve always been happy,” said Jane with dignity, “with your father.” + 

“I can’t believe that, Mumsy. Not after what you’ve told me.” + 

“Well, I’m happy now,” said Jane. “Much happier now than if⁠—” + 

“But that’s what you don’t know, Mumsy!” said Cicily, smiling. “And what I’ll never know either. You have to choose in life!” + 

Jane rose slowly from the little French sofa. “Cicily,” she said, “how can I stop you?” + 

“You can’t,” said Cicily. + 

It was terribly true. + 

“But you can love me,” said Cicily. She walked quickly across the room and took Jane in her arms. “You can love me always. You will love me, won’t you, Mumsy⁠—whatever happens?” + 

Jane felt the hot tears running down her cheeks. + 

“Cicily!” she cried. “I love you⁠—terribly. I want to help you⁠—I want to save you! I want you to be happy, but I know you won’t be!” + 

“I shall be for a while,” said Cicily cheerfully. “And after that we’ll see.” + 

It was on that philosophic utterance that Jane left her. When she reached her living-room again, she found Jack standing on the hearthrug. He was facing Isabel and Stephen a trifle belligerently. He looked tired and worn and worried. He had no smile for Jane. + 

“I know you think, sir,” he was saying wearily, “that I ought to be able to keep her⁠—that I ought to refuse to let her go. But how can I? You can’t insist on living with a woman who doesn’t want to live with you⁠—if you love her, you can’t.” + 

“Well, Jane?” said Isabel. “Did you make any headway?” + 

Jane shook her head. + 

“Jack,” she said slowly, “I’m ashamed of my daughter.” + 

Jack threw her a little twisted smile. “Don’t say that, Aunt Jane. I’m proud of my wife. I always have been and I can’t break the habit. Cicily’s all right. She’ll pull through. We’ll all pull through, somehow.” + 

“But what will you do, Jack?” wailed Isabel. + 

“I haven’t thought it out,” said Jack. “But you can always do something. The world is wide, you know.” He looked, rather hesitatingly, at Stephen. “I thought I’d leave the bank, sir, for a time, at any rate.” That would be hard on Stephen, thought Jane swiftly. “I’d like to take up my engineering. I want to leave Lakewood, and I thought if I began to fool around with those old problems again⁠—go back to school, perhaps⁠—” + 

“Attaboy!” It was Jenny’s cheerful voice. She was standing in the doorway, smiling in at them all very tranquilly. + 

“Jenny, come in,” said Stephen soberly. “We have something to tell you.” + 

“I’ve known about it for weeks, Dad,” said Jenny affably. She advanced to the hearthrug and thrust her arm through Jack’s. “Cicily’s a fool, but she must run through her folly. It’s a great shame that the world was organized with two sexes. It makes for a lot of trouble. I’m all on Jack’s side. I have been from the start. I’m thinking of marrying him myself, if he’ll turn that old bean of his to the raising of Russian wolfhounds!” + 

Jack met his sister-in-law’s levity with rather an uncertain smile. She grinned cheerfully at him. + 

“Want a drink, Jacky?” + 

“Jenny!” cried Isabel, in shocked accents. + 

“Of course he does!” persisted Jenny coolly. “I’ll ring for a cocktail.” As she walked toward the bell, her clear young eyes wandered brightly over the ravaged faces of the older generation. “Do you know, you’re all taking this a great deal too seriously? It’s not the end of the world. It’s not even the end of Cicily and Jack and Albert and Belle. They’re all going to live to make you a great deal more trouble. Save your strength, boys and girls, for future crises!” She turned to meet the maid. “A whiskey sour, Irma, and some anchovy sandwiches. You’ll all feel better when you’ve had a drink.” + 

It was, Jane was reflecting, an incredible generation. They took nothing seriously. Unless, perhaps, the preservation of the light touch. But Jack looked distinctly cheered. + 

And very grateful to Jenny. Yet Jack loved Cicily. When the whiskey arrived, Jane was very much surprised to find herself drinking it. She drank two cocktails. Isabel did, too, and ate four anchovy sandwiches as well. + 

“I had no lunch,” she remarked in melancholy explanation. Then, “I’ll run you in town, Jack,” she said, putting down her glass. + 

“No, I’m going over to call on the kids,” said Jack very surprisingly. “They leave in three days.” He turned toward the door. + 

“I’ll see you at the Winters’ musicale tonight,” said Jenny. + 

“I’m not⁠—quite sure,” said Jack slowly. + 

“Nonsense!” said Jenny. “Of course I will. The Casino, at nine. You must make Belle go, Aunt Isabel. You must make her wear her prettiest frock!” + 

“Belle wouldn’t dream of going,” said Isabel with dignity. + 

“I bet she does,” said Jenny. “And rightly so!” + 

“Jenny,” said Jane gently, “don’t.” + 

“Cicily and Albert won’t be there, Mumsy. He’ll be out here with her, as she’s going in three days. And if they were, what of it? What of it? Why carry on so about it? It’s all in the day’s work. Can’t you take divorce a little more calmly?” + 

No, she couldn’t, thought Jane, when Jack and Isabel had gone and Jenny had returned to her room and The American Kennels Gazette and she was left alone with Stephen before the living-room fire. She really couldn’t and she did not want to. What was the world coming to? What had gone out of life? What was missing in the moral fibre of the rising generation? Did decency mean nothing to them? Did loyalty? Did love? Did love mean too much, perhaps? One kind of love. It was a sex-ridden age. For the last twenty years the writers and doctors, the scientists and philosophers, had been preaching sex⁠—illuminating its urges, justifying its demands, prophesying its victory. But the province of writers and doctors, of scientists and philosophers, was preaching, not practice. Could it be possible that ordinary men and women, like Jack and Cicily, like Albert and Belle, on whom the work of the world and the future of children depended, had been naive enough to take this nonsense about sex-fulfilment seriously? Did they really believe it to be predominantly important? Sex-fulfilment, Jane thought hotly, was predominantly important only in the monkey house. Elsewhere character counted. + 

But these children had character. They had managed this appalling affair with extraordinary ability and restraint. They had a code, Jane dimly perceived, a code that was based⁠—on what? Bravado and barbarism or courage and common sense? It was very perplexing. It was very complicated. It was wrecking the older generation. But it was not a clear-cut issue, Jane admitted with a sigh, between the apes and the angels. + 

VI + 

I + 

New York was shining and shimmering in the first summer heat. Jane stood at her window in the Plaza Hotel, looking out over the feathery green treetops of Central Park at the long grey line of skyscrapers that reared their incredible towers against the serene background of the blue June sky. A black river of traffic streamed up and down Fifth Avenue. Here and there, like high lights on the water, Jane could catch the glint of a yellow taxi, the sheen of a green bus, the flash of sunlight from a moving windshield. New York looked cleaner and smarter and gayer than Chicago. It looked brand-new. Chicago, Jane thought, had a curious quality of antiquity. Like London. Looking down Adams Street, for instance, toward the smoke-stained portico of the Art Institute, with the old grey lions on guard. It was probably merely a question of the soot-smirched façades. New York, however, could boast a blue sky and a bright sun, just like the country. But it was much hotter than Lakewood. In spite of their unholy errand, Jane was glad that she and Stephen were going to sail in the morning. + 

The room behind her was crowded with luggage, neatly ticketed for the steamer. Stephen was seated in a plush armchair, perusing the columns of the New York Times. Jenny had met them at the Century, two hours before, looking very chic and New-Yorky, Jane had thought, in a new grey covert-cloth suit and a little black skull cap, pulled smartly back from her round forehead. She had come up with them to the Plaza and had perched on top of a trunk, swinging her heels and talking of her kennels in Bedford Hills. She had bought forty dogs and found a good man to take charge of them, but the repairs on the farmhouse had been rather delayed. She and Barbara could not move out until the first of July. It was just as well, Jenny had said, for now Jane and Stephen could see their penthouse on East Seventy-Ninth Street. They were to dine there that evening with Steve, who was coming from Boston on a late afternoon train to wave his parents off from the dock the next morning. + 

Jenny had talked for two hours, Jane was just realizing, and had run off for a luncheon engagement, without mentioning Cicily’s name. Without referring to the unholy errand. No one would have gleaned, from Jenny’s cheerful conversation, that her parents were not bound on a casual summer spree, a sightseeing tour, a lighthearted holiday. No one could have gathered that they had embarked on a monstrous pilgrimage to the divorce courts of France, that in three short weeks they would see one marriage of Cicily’s outrageously dissolved and another outrageously consecrated. + 

They would not have embarked on it, Jane thought with a sigh, if it had not been for the grandchildren. Albert was already in Paris. Muriel and Ed Brown, completing their circuit of the globe, were to meet him there for the wedding. Stephen would have washed his hands of the whole affair, would have left his daughter to the tender ministrations of Flora and Muriel, would have let her be given away at the altar by even Ed Brown, if it had not been so pathetically obvious that no one but Molly, the nurse, was going to look after the twins and Robin Redbreast. + 

Cicily was going to Russia for her honeymoon. To Russia and across Siberia and over the Gobi Desert to Peking, where Albert’s new job awaited him in the legation. The twins and Robin Redbreast were to summer at Gull Rocks. At Gull Rocks and Lakewood, where Cicily was to join them in October and “see all the family,” she had cheerily written, before carrying her children off to begin life in Peking. Cicily had thought the impeccable Molly, who had been, after all, nine years with the twins, was quite capable of taking the children from Paris to Gull Rocks. Muriel had agreed with her, while regretting that she and Ed Brown were to summer in England. But Jane had been outraged at the suggestion. “She just thinks of the physical care,” she had said to Stephen. “She doesn’t consider what it will do to those babies to see her marry again.” And she had offered to make the monstrous pilgrimage alone. + 

Stephen, of course, had scouted that suggestion. “I guess it’s a leading from the Lord,” he had said heavily. “I guess we both belong there.” + 

But this pleasant June morning, as Jane stood looking out over the feathery green treetops of Central Park, she had a guilty feeling that she was going to enjoy the pilgrimage, in spite of its monstrosity. Enjoy it more than Stephen would, at any rate. No woman was quite proof against the excitement of a trip to Paris. Jane had not seen Paris for twenty-three years. She had not seen New York for five. Every mother wanted to be with her daughter on her wedding day⁠—on all her wedding days, thought Jane, with a little rueful smile. And⁠—she would see André again. + 

She would certainly see André⁠—unless by ill luck he were out of Paris. Flora would arrange it. André himself would arrange it. She and André would meet⁠—it would be almost like meeting on the other side of the Jordan⁠—after thirty-four years of separation. They would meet and talk about life and she would feel again that old sense of intimacy, of identity, almost, with the boy that⁠—After all, there had never been anyone quite like André. They had seen life eye to eye. They had experienced together that first tremulous intimacy of passion. Not with Stephen, not with Jimmy, had she ever felt just that unity of interest and emotion. With Stephen there had been questioning⁠—did she love him, should she marry him? With Jimmy there had been conflict⁠—she should not love him, she should not marry him. With André it had all been as simple as the Garden of Eden. First love, Jane supposed, was always like that. + 

“Well, I’ve got to go,” said Stephen. He was lunching on Wall Street with Bill Belmont. + 

“Take a taxi, dear,” said Jane. “It’s very warm. Don’t experiment with the subway.” + 

“Don’t worry,” said Stephen. “My subway days are over, they were over when I turned sixty. Take a taxi, yourself.” + 

“I will,” said Jane. She was lunching with Agnes. It was funny how young she felt, just because she was going to see Agnes again. She glanced in the mirror before leaving the room. A sedate, grey-haired, much more than middle-aged lady glanced back at her. A lady discreetly attired in a black-and-white foulard dress and sensible kid walking-shoes and a black straw hat, perched just a little too high for fashion on a head with too much hair! But Jane only laughed. She laughed out loud alone in her hotel bedroom. Agnes would look like that, too. But it was only a joke. She and Agnes would know that the sedate, grey-haired, much more than middle-aged ladies were incredible changelings. When she and Agnes were together they were sitting on a Bryn Mawr window-seat. When she and Agnes were together they defied time and eternity. They laughed at the joke. + 

II + 

Agnes lived on Beekman Place in an old brownstone front house that she had bought twelve years ago. She had spent the proceeds of her third play upon it, figuring that it would be as good an investment as any other for little Agnes. It was very tall and narrow, with two rooms on each floor, and it had a garden, about as big as a postage stamp, overlooking the East River. There was not much in the garden but a privet hedge and a flagged path and one small poplar tree that was shining and shivering, that bright June day, in frail, pale bloom. + 

Agnes’s writing-room overlooked the garden. It had walnut panelling and book-lined walls and a large eighteenth-century table desk, with a typewriter on it, in a corner near the fireplace. Agnes and Jane spent most of the afternoon on the window-seat, looking out at the view. Jane liked the view. The grey-green river, glittering under smoke and sun, eddied swiftly past the parapet at the foot of the garden. City tugs and excursion boats plied up and down the stream, the grey towers of the Queensborough Bridge were etched against the enamelled sky, and the grass on Blackwell’s Island was the brilliant emerald green of city parks in June. Kept grass, thought Jane, that grows behind iron palings, man-made like the skyscrapers, but very tranquil and pleasant to look upon in the wilderness of brick and stone that was New York. + 

They talked of Cicily and her coming marriage. They talked of Jenny and her Seventy-Ninth Street penthouse. They talked of Steve and his house on Beacon Hill. They talked of Agnes’s work and of Agnes’s daughter. + 

Agnes turned out a play a year now. She had written twelve and had disposed of all of them, and only three had failed. One, to be sure, had had only a succès d’estime. It had been fun to work on it, but Agnes was never going to write a play like that again. Agnes was never going to finish her novel or write any more short stories, unless her luck failed her on Broadway. Agnes had banked two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the course of the last fourteen years and bought the house on Beekman Place and educated little Agnes. + 

Little Agnes was a Bryn Mawr junior. She had been prepared at the Brearley School and had gone in with a lot of nice girls whom she knew very well and was majoring in biology and physics. Little Agnes wanted to be a doctor, and was planning to enter the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia, just as soon as she graduated. She was off on a house party now in the Berkshire Hills. + 

Marion Park had been kind to little Agnes and thought the child had ability. Though Agnes had often been back to the college and had seen Marion standing in Miss Thomas’s rostrum in a black silk Ph. D. gown with blue stripes on its flowing sleeves and a little black mortar board on her still brown hair, it seemed just as strange to her as it did to Jane to think that Marion Park was now President of Bryn Mawr. Agnes’s plump, authoritative person was a familiar figure on Broadway. Her grey head was crowned with authentic dramatic laurels. Jane was a grandmother three times over. Yet it seemed incredible to both of them that a contemporary of theirs could be a college president. Incredible to think that Marion, with whom they had so often sat upon a Bryn Mawr window-seat, could have become a privileged person like Miss Thomas⁠—Miss Thomas, who had always seemed to them not quite of this world of every day. + 

“Does little Agnes feel that way about Marion?” asked Jane. + 

“The rising generation,” said Agnes with a smile, “doesn’t feel that way about anyone on God’s green earth.” + 

“Do you remember what Papa said about her,” said Jane, “that first night in Pembroke, when he sat next to her at supper? ‘I bet that girl will amount to something some day.’ ” + 

“Your father was always right about people,” said Agnes. + 

That, of course, made Jane think instantly of Jimmy. Had her father been right about Jimmy or had he been blinded by parental fears? Jane knew more now about parental fears than she had in the days when Jimmy had aroused them in the breast of her father. She knew they were very blinding. + 

“What’s the matter, Jane?” asked Agnes. “You look so sober.” + 

“I was thinking of Jimmy,” said Jane quietly. “I was thinking of how proud he would have been of you, Agnes, and of how he would have loved all this.” Her glance wandered over the cheerful, luxurious room, then came to rest on the restless river rolling past the window. + 

“Yes. He would have loved it,” said Agnes gently. “For a time. Jimmy loved success and comfort. But if he never worked for them, Jane, it was only because he loved other things more. He wasn’t like me. I’m a moneymaker, pure and simple. But Jimmy was a gypsy. Jimmy loved success for the fun of it and comfort for the ease of it, but they would soon have bored him. Jimmy could never have sat on this window-seat and looked at all those boats without wanting to charter a tug for Shanghai or Singapore. Jimmy would never have locked up his money in banks or sunk it in bricks and mortar. He wouldn’t have been any happier, really, on Beekman Place than he was on Charlton Street. Jimmy’s happiness was always just around the corner.” + 

Jane listened in silence. She had been around the corner, of course. Was that why she had represented happiness to Jimmy? If so, how lucky, how very, very lucky, that she had never let him discover that her street was no different from any other thoroughfare! + 

Agnes was very wise. Agnes was wonderful. Agnes knew everything⁠—except one thing. In all the years of their common experience, thought Jane, nothing bound her to Agnes as closely as the secret that Agnes would never share. She rose to leave her a little sadly. + 

“I hate to think of what’s before you, Jane,” said Agnes. “But remember one thing⁠—there can’t be understanding between two generations. I’m convinced of that. Love, Jane, and sympathy, but never understanding. We must take our children’s ideas on faith. We can never make them our own. Remember that and save yourself unhappiness.” + 

III + 

Jane tried to remember it that very evening, as she sat by Stephen’s side on a black-and-silver divan in the shrimp-pink drawing-room of Jenny’s East Seventy-Ninth Street penthouse. The penthouse was small and very, very modern. Jane could not understand its scheme of decoration. From the Euclid designs of the geometric silver furniture to the tank of living goldfish set in the marble walls of Jenny’s black bathroom, it all looked very queer to Jane. It looked queerer than queer to Stephen. His face had been a study when he had seen the goldfish. Young Steve had thought nothing of it. + 

“I don’t like this arty stuff,” he had said with brotherly candour. “I’d change this entire roomful of modern truck for one genuine Duncan Phyfe table!” + 

Jenny had laughed at him and so had Barbara and so had the young interior decorator who had designed the room. Rather to Jane’s surprise, Jenny and Barbara had invited three of their friends to meet Jane and Stephen⁠—three young men, who, at the first glance, seemed almost as queer to Jane as the tiny modern penthouse. + 

One was the interior decorator, of course, a clever-looking young Jew in London evening clothes. He painted, Barbara had murmured, and had done some tremendous things, and condescended to run his shop on Madison Avenue, only because one must live. One must, thought Jane, and presumably in London evening clothes. Looking at a canvas of his that hung over the silver fireplace, Jane was not surprised that he found it practical to sell chintzes on the side. It looked like a broken kaleidoscope of green and pink and yellow glass. Jane wondered if it were a sunset or a woman, then realized that her ideas of painting were outdated. It was obviously a reaction, or, at the most concrete, a passion or a mood. Jane knew she was benighted about modern art. But honest, at least. She admitted frankly that she could not speak its language. + 

The second friend was a volatile young Englishman, the musical comedy star who had just finished playing the lead in Laugh, Lady, Laugh, a show that had been “packing them in,” so Jenny had informed Jane, for the last eighteen months on Broadway. Jane thought his crisp blond hair just a ripple too curly and the strength of his clear-cut jaw line a trifle weak. Nothing made a man look weaker, Jane reflected with a twinkle, than a strong chin. He was very nice and friendly, however. His name was Eric Arthur and he had a penchant for Russian wolf hounds. He had two with him on tour, with which he walked in Central Park every day at noon. They had formed his first bond with Jenny. She had met him at a party at Pierre’s and they had talked of the wolf hounds immediately. + 

The third friend looked more to Jane like someone whom you would conceivably ask to dinner in Lakewood. That was her first impression and she immediately despised herself for it. A thought like that was distinctly unworthy. It was just like her mother and Isabel. Jane was determined to like Jenny’s friends. This third young man was only a little anaemic-looking. He came from Hartford, Connecticut, and he had gone to Yale University and he was the youthful curator of prints at the Metropolitan. He had struck up an argument with Steve immediately on the question of the eternal merit of Currier and Ives. + 

All three of them, at any rate, seemed to be on the most intimate terms with Jenny and with Barbara. The curator of prints was their amateur bootlegger, the interior decorator was furnishing the farmhouse at Bedford Hills, the musical comedy star was full of wise thoughts on English kennels where they could buy a few better bitches. He was sailing for Liverpool next week and would take the matter up for them. + 

Jane learned all this before they had finished with the cocktails. They did not finish with the cocktails for some time. Champagne was served with the perfect little dinner, and chartreuse afterward, and, later in the evening, a highball for the men. + 

By nine o’clock the curator of prints and the musical comedy star were both a little flushed and loquacious. By ten they were distinctly hilarious. The young Jew did not drink, and Steve, Jane was thankful to note, was behaving himself, though he rated his sister’s taste in liquor much higher than her taste in decoration. By eleven all the young people were shouting the lyrics from Laugh, Lady, Laugh, around the grand piano, while Eric Arthur pounded out the melody on the keys. Stephen looked fearfully tired. Jane knew she ought to take him back to the Plaza, but she did not like to leave the girls alone at a party that was going just like this. Ridiculous, of course. Jenny and Barbara were left alone at all their other parties. They looked completely in command of themselves and the situation. Too young and too pretty, however, to⁠— + 

They did look ridiculously young. And rather as if preposterously masquerading in this little modern penthouse of their own. Barbara wore a black lace smoking-jacket over a gown of trailing black chiffon. Her curly red hair was cropped close, like a prizefighter’s, on her aristocratic little head. She wore her cigarette⁠—that was the verb that came to Jane’s mind⁠—in a long green jade holder. She was standing at Eric Arthur’s shoulder, highball in hand, her arm thrust casually through the curator’s elbow, singing the jazz melodies with mock emotion. Jenny was hanging over the end of the grand piano, singing, too. She was, Jane thought, rather amazingly dressed in black velvet pajamas, with a long loose coat of cherry-coloured silk. Her shiny pale hair was brushed straight off her forehead and cut short like a boy’s at the white nape of her neck. Two long paste earrings glittered at her ears. Between them her plain, distinguished little face looked out at Jane with exactly the same expression as her poor Aunt Silly’s. But Jenny had been born in the right period. There was a premium set now on distinguished plainness. Jenny’s lank figure in its bizarre costume, Jenny’s homely face with the hair strained off her high forehead, was the essence of smartness. She looked like a cover design for Vanity Fair. + 

It was the period, of course, Jane reflected soberly. It was not the children. Young people had always sung cheerily around grand pianos. It was prohibition and the emancipation of women and the new freedom of the sexes. There was no real harm in it. But was this just Jenny’s idea of “living smartly in New York”? It was not Jane’s. It was not Stephen’s. It was not Bill Belmont’s. In his brownstone residence on East Sixty-First Street, Bill Belmont, Jane knew, was as mystified as she and Stephen were at the charms of the penthouse. + 

Eric Arthur had run through the score of Laugh, Lady, Laugh, but his nimble fingers were still rattling over the keys. A shout of applause burst from his little audience. + 

“Sing it, Eric!” they cried. + 

“It’s the new song hit from Sunny Side Up!” Jenny tossed in explanation to her parents. Eric Arthur’s tender young tenor dominated the uproar. He was singing appassionata, uplifted by highballs. + 

“Turn on the heat! Start in to strut! + 

Wiggle and wobble and warm up the hut! + 

Oh! Oh! It’s thirty below! + 

Turn on the heat, fifty degrees! + 

Get hot for papa, or papa will freeze! + 

Oh! Oh! Start melting the snow! + 

If you are good, my little radiator⁠—” + 

This was not living smartly in New York, thought Jane firmly. Young people had always sung cheerily around grand pianos. But not⁠—not drunk. Not⁠—not songs like that. She rose to leave the party. + 

“Jenny,” she whispered, “you ought to send them home.” + 

Jenny’s eyes met hers with a little indulgent twinkle. + 

“I mean it, Jenny,” said Jane. + 

“All right,” said Jenny calmly. “I will.” She moved to Barbara’s side and whispered in her ear. Barbara laughed a little, then glanced at Jane and Stephen. Jenny clapped her hands, then clapped them again, more vehemently, until the clamour about the piano ceased. + 

“You’ve got to go home, boys,” she said in the sudden silence. “It’s twelve o’clock and Mother’s a blue-ribbon girl. She thinks we’ve all had enough!” + 

The blunt statement was met with a burst of good-humoured laughter. Eric rose from the piano bench and drained the last of his highball. They were no drunker, Jane reflected, than she had seen many young men at perfectly respectable parties at home. The young Jewish decorator said good night to her very politely. He was really a nice boy, thought Jane. He got the two inebriates out of the room much quicker than Jane would have thought possible. Jane heard Barbara make a date with the curator of prints for luncheon next day. She wondered if he would remember it. When they had finally taken themselves off, Jenny turned to her parents. + 

“You didn’t like them, did you, Mumsy?” she said. “But you know Eric’s funny when he’s tight.” + 

“They say, Mr. Carver,” said Barbara conversationally to Stephen, “that the tighter he is, the funnier he is in the show. He keeps putting in lines⁠—I don’t suppose he knows what he’s saying⁠—but they always bring down the house⁠—” + 

“It’s a gift!” laughed Jenny. She was placing Jane’s evening wrap around Jane’s shoulders. “I’ll meet you at the dock,” she said. She kissed Jane tenderly and threw her arms around Stephen. She looked absurd and adorable, Jane thought, as she smiled up into his weary face⁠—like some fragile, fantastic clown, in those loose black velvet trousers and that cherry-coloured sack. Barbara was rallying Steve at the door. No one, Jane thought suddenly, had yet mentioned Cicily’s name. + 

“I wish I were going with you,” smiled Jenny. “But we’re going to have a fearfully busy month at the kennels.” + 

“I wish I were going with them,” said Steve, “but I’m just getting into my stride at the bank.” + 

“You’ll have a lovely time,” said Barbara. + 

“Won’t they?” smiled Jenny. + 

“You bet they will!” said Steve. + 

It was a conspiracy, Jane decided, as she plunged earthward in the elevator. It was a friendly conspiracy of silence, to keep two foolish old people from worrying over something they could not control⁠—something that was none of their business, really. Steve chatted pleasantly all the way back to the Plaza in the taxi about modern decoration versus Duncan Phyfe tables. Jane did not listen. They did not know what they had lost in life, these kindly, capable, clever young people who did not believe in worry. Stephen looked terribly tired in the bright, white light of the Plaza lobby. She should have taken him away from that party at ten o’clock. They did not know that they had lost anything, she thought, as she plunged skyward in the Plaza elevator. But Stephen knew. And she knew. Though it was difficult to define it. + 

IV + 

Paris, thought Jane⁠—the city of joy! She glanced across the railway carriage at Stephen’s face. It looked rather grim. Stephen was rested, however. The six days at sea had been good for him. Stephen was a sailor and, in spite of parental anxieties, he had responded immediately to the tang of the briny breeze and the roll of the deep-sea swell. While still in the Ambrose Channel, he had seemed perceptibly more cheerful. He had landed at Cherbourg that morning, looking tanned and healthy and braced for his ordeal. The grimness had returned to his face rather slowly, as he had sat silently all day, staring out through the window of the railway carriage at the pleasant midsummer French landscape. + 

The train was pulling slowly into the Gare Saint-Lazare. A group of porters were assailing the door of the carriage. The air rang with their staccato utterance. Jane caught a whiff of garlic and was suddenly exalted with a feeling of adventure. It was a real breath from a foreign land. The train had stopped. The porters stormed the luggage rack. Jane and Stephen descended to the platform. + 

“Je veux un taxi,” said Jane. + 

The porters responded with a flood of eloquence. Jane and Stephen following their blue smocked figures through the crowd. Steamer acquaintances waved and smiled. Jane caught other whiffs of garlic. She could not subdue that sense of adventure. Ten days in Paris! She was smiling a little excitedly, when she first caught sight of Cicily⁠—Cicily standing with the three children and Molly at the gate of the train. + 

“Look at Robin Redbreast!” she cried gaily to Stephen. “Isn’t he huge?” + 

It was then that she saw Albert. She suffered a quick sense of shock. Why hadn’t she expected to see him? Of course he would be there. Nevertheless, his presence seemed vaguely indecent in that little family gathering. The pleasant, snub-nosed, twinkle-eyed ghost of Jack loomed at his side. He lifted Robin Redbreast to his shoulder. They were all laughing and waving. Cicily looked radiant. The twins dashed into Jane’s arms. + 

“Mumsy!” cried Cicily. She kissed Jane warmly. Then turned to greet her father. Albert thrust Robin Redbreast into Jane’s embrace. Over the child’s yellow head, surprisingly, he kissed her. + 

“Aunt Jane,” he was saying affectionately, “it was great of you to come!” + 

Cicily’s arm was thrust through Stephen’s. She was talking excitedly as she led him through the crowded concourse. + 

“I reserved your rooms at the Chatham. Why do you go there? Aunt Muriel’s at the Ritz. I wish I had room for you in my flat, but it’s perfectly tiny. Molly hates it. Just one bathroom and we froze all winter. But it’s sweet now. You can sit on the balcony and see the Arc de Triomphe.” + 

Albert was hailing two taxis. + 

“I suppose you want to go straight to the hotel, sir, and rest,” he was saying. “Did you have a smooth passage? We’re going to have a gay week.” + 

“Cousin Flora’s simply wild to see you, Mumsy,” interrupted Cicily. “She’s been awfully nice to me. She knows the smartest people⁠—real frogs, you know⁠—and she asked me to all her parties. I’ve simply loved it. I don’t want to go to Peking at all. I’d like to live here all my life⁠—if it weren’t so far from Lakewood.” + 

Stephen was succumbing, with a faintly constrained smile, to Cicily’s gay garrulity. She broke off suddenly to squeeze his elbow and kiss his cheek. Albert took up the burden of her song. + 

“We’re all dining tonight at L’Escargot. Do you like snails, Aunt Jane? We’re going to pick up Mother and my esteemed stepfather at the Ritz⁠—my esteemed stepfather is really all right, you know. He’s a good sort. We’ll all get a drink at the Ritz bar. The Ritz bar’s quite a sight, sir⁠—” + 

“Let’s send the children home with Molly,” said Cicily gaily, “and go up to the Chatham with Mumsy and Dad. I’ve got so much to say to you, darlings, that I don’t know where to begin. We’re going to be married in Cousin Flora’s apartment. Just the families, you know. I know you’ll like my dress, Mumsy. I won’t let Albert see it⁠—” + 

This was another conspiracy, thought Jane, as she climbed into the waiting taxi. A conspiracy, this time, not of silence, but of chatter. A friendly conspiracy to keep two foolish old people from worrying over something that they could not control. A conspiracy to prove that this was a very usual situation, a very gay situation, a very happy situation⁠—a situation that called for frivolity and celebration. A party, in fact. A purely social occasion. + 

But did not Cicily, Jane wondered, as their taxi dodged and tooted through chaotic traffic of the old grey streets, did not Cicily, beneath the gay garrulity of her light and laughing chatter, feel at all disturbed by her equivocal position as Albert’s fiancée and Jack’s wife? Jane, herself, felt profoundly disturbed by it. Belle’s divorce had been granted in Reno the end of March. Albert had been⁠—could you call him a bachelor?⁠—for three months. Yet Jane could not really consider the engagement as a fait accompli until next Wednesday morning, when Cicily’s decree would be made final and Cicily, herself, would be⁠—hateful word⁠—free. She would be married three days later in Flora’s apartment. But not until Wednesday noon, Jane told herself, firmly, would she recognize the engagement. If she did not recognize it, however, what was Albert’s status in the crowded little taxi? It was terribly complicated. It was terribly sordid. Glancing from Cicily’s bright, smiling countenance to Stephen’s grim, constrained one, Jane could not agree with Albert’s initial statement. They would not have a gay week. + 

V + 

Jane and Flora were sitting side by side on the Empire sofa of Jane’s little green sitting-room in the Chatham Hotel. The sitting-room was rather small and rather over-upholstered. It was extremely Empire and extremely green. The green carpet, the green curtains, the green wallpaper, and the green furniture were all emblazoned with Napoleonic emblems. Gold crowns and laurel wreaths and bees met the eye at every turn. Jane thought it looked rather sweet and stuffy and French, but “I can’t think in this room for the buzzing” had been Stephen’s laconic comment, when Cicily and Albert had finally left them alone in it, yesterday afternoon. + 

It was ten o’clock in the morning and Flora had just come in. She had brought a big box of roses and she was terribly glad to see Jane. Stephen was downstairs in the dining-room eating what he termed “a Christian breakfast.” Jane’s tray of coffee and rolls and honey was still on the sitting-room table. + 

“Jane,” said Flora, “you’re incredibly the same.” + 

“Am I?” said Jane a little wistfully. She had not seen Flora for nine years. Flora, she thought, looked subtly subdued and sophisticated. Silver-haired and slender in her grey French frock she no longer suggested anything as bright and gay and concrete as a Dresden-china shepherdess. Frail and faded, well-dressed and weary, there was something just a little shadowy about Flora. She looked like a Sargent portrait of herself, Jane decided. There was nothing shadowy, however, in her enthusiasm over this reunion. + 

“Of course I don’t mean you look the same, Jane,” she continued honestly. “But you look as if you were the same! And that’s even nicer.” + 

“We’re all the same,” said Jane stoutly. “That’s one of the things you learn by growing old. Nobody ever changes.” + 

“Children do,” smiled Flora. “I was surprised at Cicily. She was a pretty child, but she’s grown up into much more than that. You must be very proud of her.” + 

Jane’s eyes met Flora’s for a moment in silence. + 

“Well, Flora,” said Jane slowly, “I can’t say that I am.” + 

Flora took Jane’s hand and squeezed it before she spoke. + 

“Jane,” she said gently, “the war changed everything. Even over here, it’s all quite different. People don’t act as they used to do⁠—they don’t think as they used to do. Cicily’s a sweet child. It was a pleasure to have her here in Paris. She has lived so discreetly and charmingly in that little flat up near the Étoile⁠—everyone likes her⁠—her children are adorable and Albert’s a delightful young man. I think they’ll be very happy.” + 

“They don’t deserve to be very happy,” said Jane. + 

“But you want them to be,” said Flora brightly. Flora seemed almost a member of the friendly conspiracy. “And speaking of happiness,” she went on gaily, “isn’t Muriel funny with Ed Brown? She’s a perfect wife.” + 

“He’s a perfect husband,” smiled Jane. + 

“Well, Jane!” laughed Flora, “I think that statement’s a trifle exaggerated. He’s really awful⁠—pretty awful, I mean. He’s been in Paris three weeks and he hasn’t talked of anything but prohibition. With disfavour, my dear⁠—don’t misunderstand me!⁠—with distinct disfavour! But he makes Muriel sublimely happy!” She paused to twinkle, brightly, for a moment at Jane’s noncommittal countenance. “Jane,” she said, “you’re no gossip. You never were. You’re holding out on me. I wish Isabel were here.” + 

“Well, I don’t,” said Jane, with emphasis. + 

Flora stopped in confusion. “No, I suppose you don’t,” she said. “It⁠—it must have been terrible, Jane. All in the family, I mean.” + 

“It was terrible,” said Jane. + 

“Muriel’s very happy about it. She loves Cicily.” + 

“Muriel,” said Jane deliberately, “has no moral sense. She never had. She’s always been frivolous about falling in love. About anyone’s falling in love⁠—” + 

“Jane,” said Flora suddenly, “André Duroy’s not in Paris.” + 

The simple statement fell in a little pool of silence. + 

“Oh,” said Jane, after a moment. “Well, I thought perhaps he wouldn’t be.” She tried to make her voice sound very casual. “People aren’t in cities much, you know, in the month of July. I thought he’d be off with his wife in the country.” + 

“He’s not with his wife,” said Flora meaningly. “His wife’s at Cowes. She has a lot of English friends, you know.” Flora’s voice had lost nothing of its meaning. + 

“Yes, I know,” said Jane hastily. Letters were one thing, she thought, and talk was another. Jane did not want to sit gossiping with Flora about André’s wife. It seemed vaguely indecent. But it did not take two to make a gossip. + 

“She has their boy with her. She’s very discreet. He’s a nice child. Thirteen years old and he looks just like André. André’s in the French Alps, I think. He has a studio up there somewhere. I sent him a letter.” + 

“You sent him a letter?” said Jane. + 

“Yes. To say you were coming. I asked him to the wedding.” + 

“Oh⁠—he won’t come down for it,” said Jane defensively. + 

She was conscious of wishing, rather wildly, that Flora had not written. He would not come, of course. And yet⁠—and yet⁠—Jane felt curiously hurt, in advance, to know he was not coming. It would have been much nicer if André had never known that she was in Paris. If André had not had forced on him that faintly ungracious gesture of declining to cross France to see the girl who⁠—Ridiculously, Jane was thinking of that letter he had written her when he had received the Prix de Rome. Of how she had read it in her little room on Pine Street, at the window that overlooked the willow tree. If André had not written that letter, she might not have married Stephen. What nonsense! Of course she would have married Stephen. On what other basis than that of marriage with Stephen were the last thirty years imaginable? + 

“I think he will,” said Flora. “He quite fell for Cicily⁠—” + 

Just then Stephen entered the room. Flora greeted him with enthusiasm. They sat down together on the Empire sofa and began to talk about Chicago. Jane did not listen. She was thinking of how very odd it was to think that Cicily knew André. That Cicily might know him quite well. That she might know him, absurdly, much better than Jane herself did. Cicily was only five years younger than Cyprienne. Jane was seventeen years older. Oh, well⁠—of course he would not cross France to come to the wedding. + 

VI + 

Jane and Stephen and Cicily and Albert were strolling down the Rue Vaugirard on their way to the Luxembourg Museum. They had just lunched at Foyot’s on a perfect sole and fraises à la créme. Five of Jane’s ten days in Paris had passed. They had passed very quickly, she had just been thinking, and mainly in the consumption of food and drink. Cocktails at the Ritz bar, snails at L’Escargot, blinis at the Russian Maisonnette, cointreau at the Café de la Rotonde, fish food at Prunier’s, absinthe at the Dome, Muriel’s magnificent little dinner at Le Pré Catelan, Flora’s smart one in her apartment, champagne and sparkling Burgundy and Rhine wine in brown, long-necked bottles⁠—curious memories to blend with the sense of perplexity and despair that the sight of Cicily and Albert and the three grandchildren had engendered. + 

The three grandchildren had been very endearing and Cicily and Albert had devoted themselves to the entertainment of the older generation. Between their engagements at restaurants they had crowded in two trips to the Louvre and one to Notre Dame, a visit to the Cluny Museum, a drive through the midsummer Bois, a motor ride to Versailles, a jaunt by boat down the Seine to Saint-Cloud, a wild evening on Montmartre and a mild one at the Comédie-Française. That night they were taking the twins to the Cirque Madrano, to watch the Fratellinis. The Fratellinis, Albert had explained to Jane, were the funniest clowns in the world. At the moment, between lunch at Foyot’s and tea with Flora, they had just time to take in the Luxembourg Gallery. There was not much in it, Cicily had said. + 

The friendly conspiracy of chatter, Jane thought as they crossed the sun-washed court, had never faltered. The illusion of the “party” had been consistently sustained. The two foolish old people, she reflected, as they climbed the grey stone steps of the museum, had not been left alone for an hour to think or to worry. The children had been kind and capable and very, very clever. There had been no emotional moments, no awkward discussions, no embarrassing contretemps. They were carrying it all off beautifully. They would carry it all off beautifully until the end. + 

Nevertheless, Jane had felt during the last five days that she would have been glad of an hour in which to think or not think, worry or not worry, as she chose. An hour, perhaps, in which to look at Paris, without the tinkling accompaniment of the friendly conspiracy of chatter. + 

They entered the main gallery. + 

“We’ve got to hurry,” said Cicily. + 

Jane thought how much she wished that she were entering the main gallery alone. It looked just as she remembered it. The walls were hung with the same fine Gobelin tapestries. The familiar bronze and marble figures stood on their pedestals. Jane had not seen them for twenty years, but she remembered them well. Stephen and Albert were conscientiously buying catalogues. Cicily had paused before a case of Sèvres china. A rough-hewn Rodin arrested Jane’s attention. But Jane had not come to the Luxembourg to look at the Rodins. Jane had come to the Luxembourg for quite another purpose. She moved away from Cicily and strolled casually to the corner where André’s Eve awaited her. Jane stared up at her. She stood smiling provocatively over her yet untasted apple⁠—an Eve still innocent, yet subtly provocative. Jane gazed in silence at her rounded cheeks, at the fresh virginal curves of her parted lips. Could it be possible, Jane was thinking, that she had ever looked like that? That she had ever smiled like that? Could it be possible that she had ever been anything so fresh and young and fair and inexperienced? Stephen and Cicily turned up at her elbow. Jane was conscious of a quick fear that Cicily would recognize that smile, that Stephen would comment on it. But Stephen was glancing up at the Eve with a look of complete indifference. Jane suddenly realized that Stephen had quite forgotten that it was a Duroy. But Cicily had opened her catalogue. + 

“It’s awfully vieux jeu, isn’t it?” she was saying calmly. “He’s nice, though. I met him at Cousin Flora’s.” + 

Albert slipped his arm through Jane’s. “There are some good paintings,” he was saying, “but most of them have been moved to the Louvre.” + 

Jane passed at his side from the entrance hall to the farther galleries. She wandered, blindly, past a succession of canvases. Cicily’s light prattle fell unheeded on her ears. An hour later, when they stood once more in the entrance hall, Jane could not remember one single painting that she had seen in the Luxembourg. + 

“Come look at the gardens,” Albert was saying. “They’re really charming.” + 

“You go without me,” said Jane. “I’m a little tired.” + 

“It won’t take a minute,” said Albert brightly. + 

“I’ll wait here,” said Jane. + 

Stephen and Cicily and Albert moved toward the door. From the grey light of the entrance hall, Jane watched them descend the stone steps in the dazzling sunlight of the Paris afternoon. She walked slowly back to the Eve. “There is something of you in all my nymphs and Eves and saints and Madonnas,” she was thinking. “Something you brought into my life. Romance, I guess. Nothing more tangible.” + 

She had been young once, thought Jane, as she stood staring up at the Eve. She had been fresh and fair and inexperienced. She had smiled like that. Twenty-three years ago, Stephen himself had recognized that smile. Absurd, ridiculous, however, that fleeting fear that Cicily would recognize it now! + 

Jane wondered vaguely what Eve had looked like after thirty years with Adam. After Cain and Abel had disappointed her. Why had no one ever thought of doing Eve at the age of fifty-one? Cicily’s light voice broke in upon her revery. Jane turned with a start. + 

“I wonder who she is, Mumsy?” said Cicily. + 

“Who⁠—she is?” faltered Jane. + 

“Yes,” said Cicily brightly. “They say that all those rather saccharine ladies of his are someone, Mumsy. They’re a record of his sentimental journey. His wife’s the Venus in the Metropolitan. He did it the year he was married. I think”⁠—Cicily’s blue eyes gleamed experimentally⁠—“I think it would be rather nice to be loved by an artist who would recreate you and preserve you forever in words or paint or marble. Though I suppose you’d grow up and beyond his idea of you and then you’d want to throw a brick at what he’d done. It must give lots of André Duroy’s old girls a pain to look at what he once thought they were. You’d wonder, you know, if you ever had been anything so silly. And you’d fear you had. One’s always silly, Mumsy, when one’s in love. Which is quite as it should be. But the silliness should be ephemeral. It shouldn’t be perpetuated in words or paint or marble, any more than it is in life. Don’t you think so, Mumsy?” + 

Jane’s eyes were still on the Eve. “I don’t know,” she said. “There’s Keats⁠—and the ‘Grecian Urn’⁠—‘Forever wilt thou love and she be fair.’ ” + 

“It doesn’t sound so good,” said Cicily, “if you read it ‘Forever wilt thou love and she be silly’!” She tucked her arm under Jane’s elbow. “Come on, Mumsy, Albert and Dad are waiting.” + 

VII + 

“I think,” said Stephen, “I’ll try to take a nap.” + 

“Why don’t you, dear?” said Jane. + 

Jane herself was far from feeling sleepy. She had been sitting in silence for the last half-hour on the Empire sofa in the little green sitting room, watching Stephen turn over the pages of the Paris Herald and the London Times. She rose, now, and followed him into their bedroom. It was rather a relief, she was thinking, to have something definite to do, even if that something was only pulling down three window-shades and raising one window and tucking a light steamer rug over Stephen’s recumbent form. Stephen was looking very grim and tired. They had had a hard day, though nothing much had happened in it. At eleven in the morning Cicily had telephoned. She had telephoned to announce that her lawyer had just called her up from the courtroom to inform her that her decree had been made final. There had been no complications and the last requirement had been complied with. That was all there had been to the formal proceedings that Jane and Stephen had tragically prepared themselves to witness. Two months ago two foreign lawyers had spoken in an alien tongue. Cicily had murmured a few French words of acquiescence. A judge had entered an interlocutory judgment. Today that judgment had been entered on the records of the Bureau of Vital Statistics. And a marriage had been dissolved. + 

Cicily had planned to have a little lunch with Albert. She had arranged for Jane and Stephen, however, to join Muriel and Ed Brown at the Ritz. That luncheon with Muriel, Jane reflected, had been rather like the first meal after a family funeral. Though, of course, you did not usually have to take the first meal after a family funeral in a public restaurant and you did not usually have to talk through it about prohibition with Ed Brown. Jane and Stephen had returned very early in the afternoon to their rooms at the Chatham. + 

Jane closed the bedroom door and reentered the green sitting-room. She sat down on the Empire sofa. From behind the heavy green curtains of the long French windows the sharp, staccato uproar of the traffic on the rue Daunou rang in her ears. The shrill, toy-like toots of the French taxis punctuated the sound. Cities had voices, thought Jane. Chicago rumbled and New York hummed and Paris tooted. Jane glanced at the London Times and the Paris Herald. She felt curiously empty-handed, but she did not seem to want to read the papers. Reading the papers, Jane reflected, was the eternal resource of men. It offered no distraction to women. She had at last her hour alone in Paris and she did not know what to do with it. She wondered what Cicily and Albert were doing. She thought of the Bureau of Vital Statistics. The Catholics were right. Metaphysically speaking, there was no such thing as divorce. Marriage was a mystical union of body and spirit. It was a state of being. It could not be dissolved by legal procedure. The past could not be denied. The present was its consequence. The future⁠—but as far as the future went, though Cicily seemed to Jane as much Jack’s wife as she had ever been, she was going to marry Albert Lancaster in Flora’s apartment in three days’ time. After that, Jane reflected hopelessly, she would be two men’s wife! It was frightfully complicated, metaphysically speaking. + 

Just then Jane heard a knock on the door. + 

“Entrez!” she cried, with a curious sense of relief. But it was only a bellboy. He had a letter on a little silver tray. “Merci,” said Jane and fumbled for a franc. The letter was from Isabel. + 

Jane opened it before the bellboy had left the room. Isabel’s letters were always good reading. This one contained a surprise, and Jane felt, as she read it, exactly as if Isabel were sitting beside her on the little Empire sofa. Her sister’s very accents clung to the sixteen closely written pages. + 

“Dearest Jane, + 

“I haven’t written, but I’ve been awfully busy. I’ve been thinking of you, of course, and of Stephen, too. I sometimes feel that all this has been harder on Robin and Stephen than on you and me. In a way, I think, fathers care more than mothers what happens to daughters. + 

“I care most about Jack. But, Jane, I’m beginning to feel much happier about him. He loved his work at Tech, and as soon as he left there this June, he took a summer job with the telephone company down near Mexico City. I’ve just had his first letter. He’s stringing wires and building bridges, just as Cicily said he would. He misses the children fearfully, of course, but he could not have taken them to Mexico, in any case. Nevertheless, they are the insuperable problem. + 

“At any rate, work is the thing for Jack to tie to, just now. It can’t betray him, as a woman might. It’s so much safer to love things than people. + 

“This brings me to Belle’s news. It’s what I’ve been so busy over these last two weeks. It’s still a great secret, but I know it will make you and Stephen happier to know it. She’s engaged to Billy Winter. She’s not going to announce it, but just marry him quietly here in the apartment some afternoon and slip off to Murray Bay for her honeymoon. Robin and I are going to keep the babies while she’s gone. Billy’s rented a Palmer House on Ritchie Court for the winter. + 

“Belle has no misgivings about anything and almost no regrets. And to hear Billy talk, you’d think everyone was divorced and remarried. Of course, in a way, I hate it and so does Robin. But we like Billy and he’s sweet with Belle’s children. She’s so glad, now, they’re all girls. She’s going to give them Billy’s name. She’s really in love again, I think, and if she’s happy, perhaps it will all work out for the best. But I can’t get used to this modern idea that you can scrap the past and wipe the slate clean and begin life over again. + 

“I haven’t told Mamma anything about it and shan’t, until after the wedding. She keeps right on saying she doesn’t want to see Cicily or Albert ever again. But she’ll get over that, of course. + 

“Her blood pressure has been flaring up and she’s had some dizzy spells that have worried me. She fusses a lot about the house, and Minnie quarrels with all the other servants. She just made Mamma dismiss an excellent waitress I got her⁠—such a nice girl who didn’t want her Sundays out⁠—because she thought the pantry cupboards weren’t very clean. + 

“Of course they aren’t as clean as they were when Minnie used to keep them. But the neighbourhood’s so dirty now. That factory on Erie Street always burns soft coal. I don’t blame the waitress⁠—and, anyway, Jane, you know what I mean, what difference does it make? The main thing is to keep Mamma tranquil, and she’d never know about the pantry cupboards if Minnie didn’t tell her. + 

“She ought to move, of course, into some nice apartment that would be easy to live in, but she won’t hear of it. They’re going to pull down the house across the yard and put up a skyscraper. It will take away all the south sun and the blank north wall will be hideous to look at. I hate to think what Minnie will say when the wreckers begin. The plaster dust will sift in all the windows and the noise will be frightful. After that steel riveting, I suppose, all summer and fall. + 

“If you were here, I’d really advise trying to move them at once, but I honestly don’t feel up to all the argument alone. And, after all, perhaps it wouldn’t be worth while. Mamma’s seventy-seven and she’d never really feel at home anywhere else. She doesn’t do anything any more. She never goes out. Just walks around that empty house, rummaging in bureau drawers and boxes, going over her possessions and trying to throw things away. You know Mamma always kept everything, and the closets are all full of perfectly worthless objects. She doesn’t accomplish a thing, of course, and it tires her fearfully. But she won’t stay quiet. + 

“She’s always very sweet with me when I drop in, and I think she’s quite happy. But Minnie says she talks a lot about how she wants to leave things. She mentions that to me, sometimes, and I just hate to hear her. It’s queer⁠—you’d think it would make her feel so sad, but she seems rather to enjoy it. I think it makes her feel important again⁠—you know, something to be reckoned with. Perhaps at seventy-seven that’s the only way you can feel important⁠—by disposing of your property. That would account for lots of startling wills, wouldn’t it, Jane? + 

“She told me last week that you were to have the seed-pearl set and I was to have the amethyst necklace. It really made me cry. She says she wants that opal pin that she always said was Cicily’s to go to Belle, now, along with the cameos. But she’ll change her mind about that, of course, when she hears of Billy Winter. + 

“Minnie reads the paper to her every night in the library. They’re always sitting there together when Robin and I drop in. Reading the paper or talking over old times. In a way it seems awful⁠—Mamma talking like that with Minnie⁠—But Minnie’s really the only one, now, who remembers the things that Mamma likes to talk about. She always stands up very nicely when Robin and I are there, but I know when we’ve gone she just settles down in Papa’s armchair, and she doesn’t wear her apron any longer. I think I ought to try to make her, but Robin says to let her alone. + 

“I wouldn’t write Mamma much about the wedding if I were you. Not even about the children. It would only upset her. Her great-grandchildren don’t seem to mean much to her any more. They’re just things that make the general situation worse. I dread telling her about Belle. She keeps saying she’s glad that Papa was spared all this. And Mrs. Lester. She always speaks as if they had died just last week. And, after all, it’s nine years now. + 

“Of course, Jane, I think we really feel just as badly about it as Mamma does. But we have to carry it off. Old people are just like children. They have no mercy on you. I get so sick of trying to defend the situation to Mamma and Minnie, when I think, in my heart, there’s no defence for it. + 

“Well⁠—when Jack’s a full-fledged engineer and Belle and Billy have settled down in Ritchie Court and Cicily and Albert are living in Peking, I suppose we’ll all shake down in some dreadful modern way and accept the situation and not even feel awkward about it. Cicily’s children are still my grandchildren and Belle’s children are Muriel’s grandchildren as well as mine. We’re all held together by the hands of babies, which, I suppose, are the strongest links in the world. Nevertheless, Cicily and Albert won’t live in Peking forever, and I just can’t bear to think of the Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving luncheons that are ahead of us! It all seems so terribly confused and sordid. + 

“But I’m fifty-six, old dear, and you’re fifty-one and Stephen’s turned sixty and Robin’s sixty-three. The children will all have to live with the messes they’ve made a great deal longer than we will. So I suppose it’s none of our business⁠—how they work out their own salvation. I wish I could really think so. + 

Jane read the letter through three times and then sat staring at it in silence. She was thinking of Cicily. Of Cicily, sitting at her side on the sofa of her little French drawing-room in Lakewood and saying courageously, “In two years’ time we’ll all be a great deal happier. A great deal happier than we’ve been for years.” It was, however, “a dreadful modern way” to find your happiness. Jane had no sympathy with it. She did not even feel sure that Belle’s engagement made matters any better. It made them worse, perhaps. More trivial, more meaningless, more like the monkey house. She would not tell Cicily, she reflected firmly, about Belle’s engagement. She would not give her that satisfaction. + 

VIII + 

Three days later, when Jane entered Flora’s drawing-room with Stephen, she had no particular sense that she was going to witness the consecration of a marriage. The civil rites of France that they had all subscribed to that morning had made Cicily, she conceded, Albert’s lawful wife. This blessing of the Church seemed but an irrelevant afterthought. Cicily had set her heart on it, however. It was part of the party. It all went to prove that this was a very usual situation, a very gay situation, a very happy situation. It was the consummation of the friendly conspiracy of chatter. + 

Flora’s beautiful formal room was swept and garnished for the ceremony. It was always a little bare. The polished floor was sparsely adorned with three small rugs. The furniture was clustered in little social groups of chairs and sofas and small convenient tables. A Renoir hung over the fireplace⁠—it was the only picture in the room⁠—the portrait of a plump dark lady in a red velvet gown with a shirred bustle and a fair-haired child in a white muslin frock with a blue sash. The room was filled with vases of white lilies and curtained against the crude glare of the July sunshine. The perfume of the flowers, the subdued light, the faint gleam, here and there, of glass and gilt and parquet, the tranquillity of the Victorian lady over the fireplace, all subtly contributed to the sense of space and serenity that was the room’s distinguishing characteristic. The windows were open, their silken hangings moving a little in the gentle July breeze. The uproar of the Paris traffic was hushed in Flora’s neighbourhood. The tiny, rippling plash of some fountain in an outer court could be distinctly heard above the voices of Flora’s guests. + 

Flora’s guests were very few in number. Jane’s eyes found Cicily at once. She was at Albert’s side, smiling up into the face of a rather more than middle-aged gentleman, who was standing, when Jane entered the drawing-room, with his back to the door. Her gown was charming⁠—a daffodil yellow chiffon. A great straw shade hat hid her golden hair. She was carrying a sheaf of yellow calla lilies. The three children were being restrained by Molly in a distant corner of the room. Robin Redbreast was scuffling on the shiny floor. To judge by their rosy, excited faces they had no sense of the solemnity of the occasion. Flora, in a frock of pale grey taffeta, was talking to Ed Brown on the hearth beneath the Renoir. Ed Brown looked very cheerful. He had a gardenia in the buttonhole of his cutaway. Muriel, in a striking new costume of black-and-white satin, was chatting very pleasantly with the Church of England clergyman. He was a very callow young clergyman, and he did not look entirely at his ease with Muriel. She was doing her best for him, however. She had turned the full battery of her deeply shaded, bright blue eyes upon his embarrassed countenance. Her carmined lips were smiling. + 

“Here you are, Jane!” cried Flora. + 

Cicily waved her yellow lilies. The more than middle-aged gentleman at whom she had been smiling turned as she did so. Across the slippery expanse of polished floor, Jane stared at him, astounded. She suffered a distinct sense of shock. She was back, instantly, in Chicago in the early nineties. She was back in the Duroys’ little crowded living-room in the Saint James Apartments. She had two thin pigtails and a sense of social inadequacy and she was staring at Mr. Duroy! He had come! It was André! But how exactly like his father! The greying beard, the beribboned eyeglasses, the shred of scarlet silk run through the buttonhole! The wise, sophisticated gleam in the shrewd brown eyes! + 

The eyes were not sufficiently sophisticated, however, to veil their expression of complete astonishment. André stared at Jane. She saw the glint of amazement fade quickly from his face. A broad smile of pleasure supplanted it. It had struck her like lightning, however. She knew what it meant. She was fifty-one years old. Then André was holding both her hands in his own. + 

“Jane!” he was crying. “It is really you!” Looking up at the bearded face, meeting the wise, sophisticated gleam behind the beribboned eyeglasses, Jane was desperately trying to realize that it was really André. + 

“And this is Stephen,” she said confusedly. + 

The men shook hands. Cicily kissed her prettily over the yellow lilies. Albert tore his eyes from his bride to smile happily, reassuringly at Jane. The clergyman slipped away to get into his vestments. Cicily was taking command of the situation. + 

“I’ll stand here near the windows,” she was saying gaily. “I want the children near me, Molly! And you, too, Mumsy!” + 

André was staring at Jane. She still felt he must be Mr. Duroy. Cicily slipped her arm around her waist. + 

“Have you heard from Aunt Isabel?” she asked. “Albert had a cable from Belle this noon. She was married yesterday to Billy Winter.” Her blue eyes, meeting Jane’s, were twinkling with tranquil amusement. “She wouldn’t let me get ahead of her! But isn’t it nice?” + 

The clergyman had returned. His vested figure looked strangely out of place in Flora’s drawing-room. + 

“Come, Dad!” cried Cicily. “You know your place by this time!” + 

The little company had gathered in an informal semicircle. Stephen looked very grim as he took his stand by Cicily. Ed Brown was beaming, in step-paternal solicitude, at the ardent young face of Albert. Robin Redbreast was clinging to Molly’s hand. Jane moved to put her arms around the twins. Little John Ward smiled happily up at her. André was covertly watching her, all the time, from his stand between Flora and Muriel. The Church of England clergyman opened his prayer book. + 

“Dearly beloved brethren,” he said, “we are met together in the sight of God and this company to join together this man and this woman⁠—” + 

Jane turned her eyes from the flushed and radiant face of her recalcitrant daughter. She would not look at it. She could not look at it. This was worse than any wedding. This was worse than all the weddings. The measured tones of the clergyman’s voice recalled with frightful vividness the ceremony in her little Lakewood garden. Was she the only wedding guest, Jane wondered dumbly, that saw so plainly the pleasant, snub-nosed, twinkle-eyed ghost of Jack, standing at Cicily’s side? + 

IX + 

“I didn’t think you’d come,” said Jane. + 

“Of course I came,” said André. + 

They were sitting side by side in a taxi that was rolling down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Half an hour before Jane had seen Cicily depart for her honeymoon with Albert Lancaster. The parting with the children had been painfully emotional. Cicily herself had been very much moved. Little Jane had wept, and John had clung to his mother, and Robin Redbreast had tried to run after her as she paused on Albert’s arm, in the doorway of Flora’s apartment, to toss one last tremulous kiss to Jane. + 

“Well⁠—that’s over!” Stephen had said, when she had vanished. Personally Jane felt that it had just begun. The summer stretched before her with the children to watch over⁠—the autumn with its inevitable parting⁠—the years ahead with their adjustments and compromises. Then André had spoken. + 

“Are you really going tomorrow?” he had asked. + 

Jane had nodded. + 

“Then won’t you come back with me, now, to my studio? I want to talk to you.” + 

“Oh, go, Jane!” Flora had cried. “André’s studio is awfully interesting.” + 

“I think,” Jane had said rather slowly, “I’d better go back to the Chatham with Stephen. The children are dining with us, so Molly can pack.” + 

“Won’t Stephen come, too?” said André, a little hesitantly. + 

“No,” said Stephen abruptly. “I⁠—I think I’d like to be with the kids. But why don’t you go, Jane?” + 

And André had picked up his hat. That was how Jane had come to be with him in the taxi. She was still trying to realize that he was really himself. It was a great waste of André, she reflected, to have to meet him after thirty-four years at Cicily’s wedding. Her thoughts were with the grandchildren. It was hard to concentrate on André, after all she had just been through. Perhaps at fifty-one, however, it would always be hard to concentrate on any man. At fifty-one, you were perpetually torn by conflicting preoccupations. Meeting André’s gaze with a smile, Jane observed, a trifle whimsically, that he, at least, had achieved concentration. His wise, sophisticated brown eyes were bent earnestly upon her. + 

“You didn’t really think I wouldn’t come, did you?” said André. + 

“I didn’t know,” said Jane. Then added honestly, “I didn’t want to hope too much that you would.” + 

“Why not?” smiled André. + 

“For fear of being disappointed,” said Jane promptly. “I like to keep my illusions.” + 

“Am I one of your illusions, Jane?” asked André, with a twinkle. + 

“You always have been,” said Jane soberly. + 

André laughed at that. “The same honest Jane!” he said, as the taxi drew up at the curbing. + 

As André paid the cabman, Jane stood on the sidewalk and wondered where she was. She stared up at the grey stone façade of the building before her. She had not noticed where the taxi was going. It had crossed the Seine. That was all she knew. She felt a pleasing little sense of adventure as she followed André through some iron gates, across the corner of a crumbling courtyard, and in a tall carved doorway that opened on the court. A curved stone stairway stretched before her, leading up into comparative darkness. Jane’s sense of adventure deepened. + 

“It’s three flights up,” said André, “and there is no lift.” + 

Jane tried not to catch her breath too audibly as she plodded up the stairs, her hand on the iron rail. Her sense of adventure had faded a little. How ignominious, she was thinking, how fifty-one, to have to puff and pant on a staircase at André’s side! On the third landing he unlocked a door. + 

“Come in,” he said. + 

Jane found herself in a large light whitewashed room, the walls of which were hung with charcoal sketches and lined with bronze and plaster and marble figures. A frame platform occupied the centre of the floor. On it were placed a high stool, a box of sculptor’s tools, and a tall ambiguous form that was draped in a white cloth. A grand piano stood in one corner. Near it were clustered a divan, two comfortable armchairs, and a tea-table. Above them a great square window looked out over the rounded tops of an avenue of horse-chestnuts, down a curving vista of narrow grey street to the Gothic portico of a little hunchbacked church. One of the tourist-free, nameless old churches, Jane thought, that you always meant to visit in Paris and never did! + 

“Well, how do you like it?” asked André. + 

“I love it,” said Jane. + 

She sat down in an armchair and smiled up at André. She was beginning to feel that this bearded gentleman was really the boy that she had loved. The grandchildren seemed very far away. She felt a tremulous little sense of intimacy at the thought that this was André’s very own studio and that they were alone in it together. + 

“I do all my work here,” said André. + 

Jane gazed about her. The place looked very businesslike. + 

The armchairs were worn and the divan was covered with a frayed Indian rug and a heterogeneous collection of cushions that had seen better days. The tea-set was a little dusty. Jane felt, absurdly, that she would like to wash that tea-set for André! + 

“Would you like some tea?” he asked. + 

Jane shook her head. + 

“I can get it,” said André. “I live here, you know, a great deal of the time. I’ve a bedroom and a kitchen on the court.” + 

“I thought,” said Jane, “you had a house in Paris.” + 

“I have,” said André, “but my wife’s not often in it. I live there, usually, when she’s in town.” + 

His words made Jane think instantly of the older Duroys. Of Mr. Duroy, looking just like André, riding that tandem bicycle with his wife! + 

“André,” she said, “where is your mother?” + 

“She lives in England,” said André soberly. “Father died twenty years ago in Prague. Mother went back to my grandfather’s house in Bath.” + 

“The one you told me about,” smiled Jane, “in the Royal Crescent?” + 

“The same,” said André, answering her smile. “Mother’s seventy-three, you know. She’s very active. She breezes in here every few months and washes up those teacups!” He broke off abruptly. “Are you interested in sculpture?” + 

“I’m interested in yours,” said Jane. + 

Her eyes were wandering over the bronze and plaster and marble figures. They were charming, Jane thought. It was absurd of Cicily to call that Eve vieux jeu! It was absurd of Cicily to say⁠—Jane rose suddenly from her chair. Her gaze on the bronze and plaster and marble figures had grown a little more intent. She walked the length of the room in silence. André’s nymphs and Eves and saints and Madonnas drooped on every pedestal. Soft limbs and clinging draperies met the eye at every turn. The charcoal sketches on the walls vaguely revealed the grace of feminine curves. There was a certain harem-like quality to André’s studio! Would she have noticed it, Jane wondered, if it had not been for Cicily’s cynical words in the Luxembourg Gallery? Why⁠—it was an absolutely Adamless Eden! Except for André, of course. + 

“I must show you what I’m doing now,” he said suddenly. He turned toward the frame platform. “It’s a war memorial,” he explained, as he removed the cloth from the ambiguous form. “Isn’t she charming?” + 

She was charming. She was just that. Jane stared in silence at the unfinished figure⁠—a lovely girlish angel, sheathing a broken sword over a young dead warrior. Angels should be sexless, thought Jane quickly. Over young dead warriors their wings should droop in pity, not in love. + 

“Isn’t she charming?” repeated André. “My angel?” + 

Who was she? Jane could not help thinking. It was one of those thoughts that you despised yourself for, of course. + 

“Yes,” she said doubtfully. “Yes, but⁠—” + 

“But what?” smiled André. + 

“Not awfully⁠—angelic.” Jane wondered, as she spoke, just why she felt that she must make her criticism articulate. It was part of the old fourteen-year-old feeling of intimacy, perhaps. The feeling that she always owed André the truth. He was smiling again a trifle ironically. + 

“A little earthy, you think, my angel?” + 

Jane nodded soberly. + 

“Perhaps you’re right,” said André cheerfully. “Some of my angels have been a little earthy, you know.” + 

Jane looked at André. She still had that funny feeling that she owed him the truth. + 

“That’s too bad,” she said. + 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said André. “I’ve liked them earthy.” + 

Jane could not quite respond to his comical smile. + 

“Wasn’t that⁠—rather foolish of you?” she said slowly. She was beginning to feel a terrible prig! André was looking at her with a very amused twinkle in his shrewd brown eyes. + 

“Qui vit sans folie n’est pas si sage qu’il croít,” he said. “La Rochefoucauld said that, Jane. He was a very wise old boy.” + 

Jane’s glance had dropped before André’s twinkle. + 

“Yes,” she said slowly, “but⁠—” + 

“But what?” said André again. + 

Jane’s eyes were on his hands. She had felt a little shock of recognition when she looked at them. Hands did not change as faces did, she thought. André’s were still the strong sculptor’s hands of his boyhood. Prig or no prig, Jane felt an inexplicable impulse to give André good advice. + 

“André,” she said solemnly, “you ought to snap out of all this. Leave Paris. Go out to the provinces and forget the earthy angels. You’ve still got twenty years ahead of you.” André was smiling at her very amusedly, but Jane was not abashed. “You ought to come back to the corn belt, André. I know that seems ridiculous, but it’s true. Come back to the corn belt and do a bronze of Lincoln. Spend a winter in Springfield, Illinois, and get to know the rail-splitter. It would do you good.” + 

He shook his head. “It’s not in my line,” he said. “I tried a bronze of Foch last year. I had a good commission, but I couldn’t get interested.” + 

“You would get interested,” urged Jane, “if you really worked at it. You get interested in anything you actually experience.” + 

Again André’s smile was very much amused. But rather tender. + 

“It’s thirty-four years since I last saw you, Jane,” he said. “What have you experienced?” + 

He had dismissed the subject. He spoke as if to a child. Jane suddenly felt very young and virginal, but just a little irritated. + 

“I’ve experienced Stephen,” she said briefly. + 

“That all, Jane?” asked André. Under his ironic eye Jane felt far from confidential. She succumbed to an impulse to dismiss a subject herself. + 

“Of course,” she said. + 

“I wonder,” said André gallantly. But the gallantry was not very convincing. He did not seem incredulous. Jane was not surprised. She knew, of course, that she did not look any longer like the kind of woman who had ever experienced anything very much. + 

“But if it’s true,” continued André lightly, “don’t let it trouble you. L’amour fait passer le temps, le temps fait passer l’amour. It all comes to the same thing in the end, Jane, whatever we experience.” + 

Jane stared at him, appalled. He was pulling the cloth back over his earthy angel. He seemed quite unconscious of the significance of his utterance. Of the significance of the lesson that he had learned from life. Jane did not feel young and virginal and irritated any longer. She felt fifty-one years old and quite stripped of illusion. But very sorry for André. + 

“I must go,” she said. “I must go back to Stephen.” The grandchildren seemed much nearer than they had twenty minutes before. André smiled pleasantly at her as she preceded him out of the studio. + 

“I loved seeing your angel,” said Jane politely. + 

They descended the stairs together in silence. They crossed the crumbling courtyard and went out through the iron gates. André whistled for a taxi. Jane could not think of anything more to say to him. She was thinking of the faith that she had kept with the lover of her girlhood. “L’amour fait passer le temps, le temps fait passer l’amour.” Jane wished very sincerely that André had stayed in the French Alps. She wished that she had never come to his studio. The taxi rolled up to the curb. André handed her into it. + 

“Goodbye,” said Jane. + 

“Au revoir,” said André. He did look exactly like his father⁠—in spite of the earthy angels! “It’s been great to see you, Jane!” + 

“Goodbye,” said Jane again. She smiled and nodded gaily. The taxi rolled off down the curving vista of the narrow grey street. It tooted its horn and turned abruptly at the Gothic portico of the little hunchbacked church. The quai, the Seine, the Isle Saint-Louis and the towers of Notre Dame swung quickly into view. The day was fading into a sunset haze. But Jane was not thinking of the view. She was thinking of how things turned out. Of the inevitable disillusion of life. + 

“It all comes to the same thing in the end, Jane, whatever we experience.” But that was not true. That was a very fallacious philosophy! For, obviously, you did not come to the same thing in the end, yourself. You were, eventually, the product of your experience. + 

Jane’s mind returned to the problems of her children. If she had had Cicily’s courage of conviction, she reflected with a dawning twinkle, she might have married André and remarried Stephen and run away with Jimmy. Her life might have been the more interesting for those forbidden experiments. But she would not have been the same Jane at fifty-one. Not that Jane thought so much of the Jane she was. Or did she? Did you not always, Jane asked herself honestly, think a little too tenderly of the kind of person that you had turned out to be? + 

Cicily had been right about one thing. You had to choose in life. And perhaps you never gave up anything except what some secret self-knowledge whispered that you did not really care to possess. But no, thought Jane! She had made her sacrifices in agony of spirit. She had made them in simplicity and sincerity and because of that curious inner scruple that Matthew Arnold had defined⁠—that “enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness.” But to what end? + 

For Cicily had been right about another thing. You did not know⁠—you could not ever tell⁠—just where the path you had not taken would have led you. Cicily and Albert, on their way to Russia, were very happy. Belle and Billy were happy in Murray Bay. Jack, stringing his telephone wires and building his bridges down near Mexico City, was well on the road, perhaps, to a more enduring happiness than he had ever known before. The six children, Jane was prepared to admit, would probably fare quite as well at the hands of five affectionate parents as they had at the hands of four. Jane could not conscientiously claim that the world was any the worse for Cicily’s bad behaviour. + 

To what end, then, did you struggle to live with dignity and decency and decorum? To play the game with the cards that were dealt you? Was it only to cultivate in your own character that intangible quality that Jane, for want of a better word, had defined as grace? Was it only to feel self-respectful on your deathbed? That seemed a barren reward. + 

“I have lived and accomplished the task that Destiny gave me, and now I shall pass beneath the earth no common shade.” Dido had said that. Across the years Dido had said that to Jane and Agnes on the Johnsons’ little front porch “west of Clark Street.” Jane could remember thinking it was “nice and proud,” Dido’s niceness and her pride had illumined the difficult hexameters of Virgil’s Aeneid. They had burned with a brighter light than the flames of her funeral pyre. + 

The reward, however, still seemed a trifle barren. To pass beneath the earth no common shade. That romantic prospect was not as inviting to Jane at fifty-one as it had been at sixteen. A place in the hierarchy of heaven seemed rather unimportant. Jane felt a little weary, facing an immortality that would prove in the end only one more social adventure. She would prefer oblivion. + 

But André had not been right about experience. If André had married Jane and settled down in Lakewood, he would not have been the bearded cynic he was at fifty-three. Wives had a lot to do with it. It was Cyprienne⁠—and the earthy angels, of course⁠—Jane thought indulgently, who had made André what he was today. “L’amour fait passer le temps, le temps fait passer l’amour!” What words to hear from the lips of the man whose romantic memory you had been tenderly cherishing for thirty-four years! From the lips of the boy who had walked so bravely, so proudly out of your youth down Victorian Pine Street! Jane was thinking again of the inevitable disillusion of life. Was it inevitable, she wondered? If Jimmy had lived, would he be as dead as André? + 

X + 

But Stephen had lived and he was still very much alive. That consoling thought struck Jane the moment that she entered the little green sitting-room in the Chatham Hotel, and she felt distinctly cheered by it. Stephen was sitting between the twins on the Empire sofa, with Robin Redbreast on his knees. He looked cheerfully up at Jane over the book he was reading. Jane recognized it at once. It was the familiar copy of the King Arthur Stories, from their library at home. Stephen must have taken it from the shelf, Jane thought swiftly, and packed it in his trunk for the grandchildren without saying anything to her about it. Stephen was a darling! Husbands had a lot to do with it, too, of course. Stephen had had a lot to do with the sort of Jane Jane found herself at fifty-one. Facing Stephen and the grandchildren she felt a little ashamed of her recent preoccupation with André and with Jimmy. + 

“Go on,” she said. “Don’t stop reading.” She sank into a chair. The children wriggled their approval. + 

Stephen’s eyes returned to the book. “We’re just finishing,” he said. + 

Jane knew the story well. It was the first adventure of Sir Percival in the Forest of Arroy. The boyish Sir Percival⁠—Jane’s favourite knight. She had heard Stephen read it innumerable times to Cicily, Jenny, and Steve. Years ago now, of course, though it seemed only yesterday. When she closed her eyes, Jane lost all sense of time. She lost all sense of the grandchildren. When Jane closed her eyes, she was no longer in Paris. But she was not in the Forest of Arroy. She was back once more in the Lakewood living-room, and Stephen was sitting in his armchair with the children around him, and Cicily’s hair was long and crinkly, and Jenny’s round forehead was topped with her Alice in Wonderland comb, and Steve was wearing his first sailor suit. + 

How odd it was, thought Jane, that children grew up so unexpectedly. On looking back down the years, you could not see just what you had done⁠—just what you had let them do that⁠—And once they had escaped you, what was there to say to them? But Stephen was finishing the story of Sir Percival. + 

“ ‘And as it was with Sir Percival in that first adventure, so may you meet with a like success when you ride forth upon your first undertakings after you have entered into the glory of your knighthood, with your life lying before you and a whole world whereinto you may freely enter to do your devoirs to the glory of God and your own honour.’ ” + 

There it was in a nutshell. That was all there was for parents to say to children. You could bring them up according to your lights, but in the end you could only watch them ride forth and wish them well. And parents should remember, Jane admitted with a sigh, that the whole world should be freely entered, and that the idea of devoirs was apt to differ in successive generations. + 

Stephen closed the book. Robin Redbreast wriggled off his knee. Little John Ward’s eyes were shining. His sister’s face, however, looked a trifle wistful. Perhaps she had not been listening so very attentively. + 

“I wonder,” she said slowly, “I wonder where Mother is now.” + 

Stephen’s eyes met Jane’s. “I was thinking,” he said, “we might all go out to the theatre this evening.” + 

“All of us?” cried little Jane. Her eyes were shining now like John Ward’s. + 

“All of us,” said Stephen solemnly. + 

“Not Robin Redbreast?” said John Ward. + 

“Yes, Robin Redbreast,” said Stephen. + 

The twins began jumping up and down in ecstasy. Robin Redbreast’s four-year-old countenance was stupefied with delight. It was fun to please children. You could please them so easily. Nevertheless, Jane looked inquiringly at Stephen. + 

“There’s a company reviving the Gilbert and Sullivan operas at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées,” said Stephen. “I found it in the Paris Herald. Tonight they’re playing The Mikado.” + 

The twins’ jumps had accelerated into a spirited game of tag. They were chasing Robin Redbreast around the Empire sofa. Stephen, King Arthur stories in hand, had risen to his feet. He was looking indulgently at his grandchildren and humming a little tune. He did not know the words, of course. + 

Stephen never knew the words of anything! But Jane knew them. She walked over to Stephen and put her arm through his. + 

Robin Redbreast had collided with the centre table. He promptly fell down, and little Jane fell over him and John Ward triumphantly tagged her on an uplifted ankle. Stephen was still looking indulgently at his grandchildren and he was still humming his tune. The grimness, Jane realized suddenly, had quite faded from his face. Jane’s eyes returned to the twins and Robin Redbreast. The unspoken words of Stephen’s tune were ringing in her ears: + 

“Everything is a source of fun, + 

Nobody’s safe, for we care for none, + 

Life is a joke that’s just begun⁠—” + 

When you looked at a child, Jane reflected solemnly, you could never believe that it would grow up to disappoint you. + 