"That's not the point," Dick persisted. "I don't mind idle gossip. I

don't give a damn about it. It's the statement itself."

"I should say that you are the only person who knows anything about it."

Dick made a restless, impatient gesture.

"I want to know one thing more," he said. "Nina told you, I suppose.

Does--I suppose Elizabeth knows it, too?"

"I rather think she does."

Dick turned abruptly and went out of the room, and a moment later

Leslie heard the front door slam. Elizabeth, standing at the head of the

stairs, heard it also, and turned away, with a new droop to her usually

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valiant shoulders. Her world, too, had gone awry, that safe world of

protection and cheer and kindliness. First had come Nina, white-lipped

and shaken, and Elizabeth had had to face the fact that there were such

things as treachery and the queer hidden things that men did, and that

came to light and brought horrible suffering.

And that afternoon she had had to acknowledge that there was something

wrong with Dick. No. Between Dick and herself. There was a formality in

his speech to her, an aloofness that seemed to ignore utterly their new

intimacy. He was there, but he was miles away from her. She tried hard

to feel indignant, but she was only hurt.

Peace seemed definitely to have abandoned the Wheeler house. Then

late in the evening a measure of it was restored when Nina and Leslie

effected a reconciliation. It followed several bad hours when Nina had

locked her door against them all, but at ten o'clock she sent for Leslie

and faced him with desperate calmness.

To Elizabeth, putting cold cloths on her mother's head as she lay on the

bed, there came a growing conviction that the relation between men and

women was a complicated and baffling thing, and that love and hate were

sometimes close together.

Love, and habit perhaps, triumphed in Nina's case, however, for at

eleven o'clock they heard Leslie going down the stairs and later on

moving about the kitchen and pantry while whistling softly. The servants

had gone, and the air was filled with the odor of burning bread. Some

time later Mrs. Wheeler, waiting uneasily in the upper hall, beheld her

son-in-law coming up and carrying proudly a tray on which was toast of

an incredible blackness, and a pot which smelled feebly of tea.

"The next time you're out of a cook just send for me," he said

cheerfully.

Mrs. Wheeler, full and overflowing with indignation and the piece of her

mind she had meant to deliver, retired vanquished to her bedroom.




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