Book III GRACE KLINE ANDREWS

CHAPTER ONE

One Sunday of the following March Grace set out to walk from her house to Letty's. She had been waiting now for three months since the event which even Grace had never fully dared to expect and which had caused her incredulous friends to exclaim as with one gasp, "What a marvelous break!" Blake's wife was dead.

But still Grace waited. Even in her work she felt becalmed. Her job had chosen this time to vanish; her book had sunk almost without a ripple, and she could not, as ordinarily, generate within herself sufficient power to counteract these circumstances. The best she had been able to do was to maintain the noise of activity, to keep the engine whirring on the same spot. She went about indefatigably as usual; the difference was not yet visible to the naked eye. She gave no hostages to failure; she wrote; she got odd jobs of publicity; whatever she economized on, she was careful not to economize on her appearance. Meanwhile, the circle of her friends stood about, cocking ears and eyes inquiringly and impatiently for the climax. They had been present a long time at this affair and did not hesitate to let her know that they would feel cheated unless it came to a fitting close. Renie Harrington suggested, when she had Grace up to dinner to observe with her own blue, ingratiating, cutting eyes, that "it would be so convenient to be able to put them at last into one bedroom on week-end visits." There were bets laid as to whether or not a marriage would occur.

Grace was taciturn. Drawing herself up with that retreat of her chin and advance of her eyes which had the effect of holding the other person at the end of a very long arm, she said with dignity, "I—don't know—what—our plans—will be."

Only Letty knew. As in the very old days when Grace had rushed up to the one-room-and-alcove harbor on Riverside Drive to spill tears on Letty's glossy spreads, and had cramped herself into the living-room couch of nights to cry in peace at Letty's house, so the road led back again to Letty.

Grace marched along briskly, decisively, but her cheeks were hollow, the skin drawn tense and translucent over them, while her eyes, twice as huge, the narrow coat from Paris patterned all over in orange wools and brown wools and held tight across her flat body, the gleam of queer, fragile stones set in spidery silver at her throat—all these conspired to resolve her into a new aspect, to give her a jeweled, plumaged, bird-of-preyish look.

On Sundays, the maid's day off, Harold and Letty spent the morning providing their baby with fresh air in Central Park. Grace knew where to look for them, just past an entrance by a little summer house. Harold was reading the Sunday papers within, while Letty walked slowly without, keeping pace with her little girl. She was about two years old, dressed in a short green wool coat and bonnet, and she shoved herself around in a tiny pen on wheels. Grace looked her over indulgently, admired her with preoccupation. Then the two girls sat down on a bench, while the child jerked herself back and forth by their knees.

For a long time Letty listened, nodding now and then. Too many confidences were deposited with her; she was a strongbox to her friends. And these confidences were all so simple really. They all boiled down to the fact that the man one wants is always the most difficult man to get, and that was no news to Letty.

"It's not that I'm not—sure of Blake in a way," concluded Grace. "But he's so—evasive. He won't see."

Letty nodded briefly. "I know."

"Well, I'll tell you what I can do," she said at length in a matter-of-fact tone. "If you like I'll make a date with him and talk to him like a Dutch uncle. I'll tell him that he's causing you a lot of unnecessary trouble and worry and embarrassing you before your friends and that it really is about time he realized it. I think that should work. Blake likes me."

"Yes, he does," agreed Grace. Some such plan had been in her mind. She gave a long sigh of relief but added almost at once, "Don't be too—don't rub it in, Let. Be a little careful. You know—you can't—bludgeon Blake."

"Oh, of course," said Letty, shrugging. "I'll be tactful. Little Mrs. Tactful Fix-It, that's me."

The two girls looked into each other's faces. Letty's eyes wavered before the intent appeal, the clutching hope, in the countenance of Grace. She stared at the asphalt path, dejected, somewhat petulant before the present necessity and the final futility of her errand. Why did Grace have to clutch so? And she could no more feel why than one with full control of his muscles can feel why a person in a nervous spasm is powerless to unclose his fingers. She had to stop and search for reasons in her mind and from them argue herself into sympathy. She had to remember that to share a home with Harold and only Harold, to have him and him alone there in the morning and there at night, had once seemed to her the most blissful of all eventualities. Consciously there was no accounting for this sentiment now; the veiling, aching glamour effused from, old times, old feelings, rose ever and ever more wanly on the horizon and ever and ever more imperceptibly faded like receding smoke. But far be it from Letty to counsel anyone against even the slight sustenance of distant smoke! She said in a lower voice, "I suppose I might as well make the date right away—can't Monday; got a date with li'l Leroy—Tuesday maybe—and talk to him and get it settled."

Grace and Blake were married a week later. Blake had always liked and trusted Letty. Once she had set before him, with a directness that—as she was not involved—could be at once persuasive and unexacting, what Grace's feelings were and what his inaction seemed to mean to outsiders, he had understood. He was surprised. He supposed he had always intended to marry Grace, that she was aware of his intentions, and that therefore the need for action nullified itself. Some day he supposed they would find themselves standing before a justice of the peace who probably would fall from heaven before them at the propitious moment. He was rather resentful to be confronted with the reality of arrangements while he was in the midst of a mild, unmarried peace, while they were both free, he thought. Still, if delay made Grace miserable, he agreed with Letty that they might as well get it over with. He only stipulated that, lest his haste should seem indecent or suspicious to his parents, the nuptials should be secret until he had had a chance to "plant the idea" in their minds. Grace thoroughly comprehended such a plan. As for his state of mind, it no longer hurt her though it would always make her sigh. After so many years, she had still to scheme in order to convey to him subtly, so as not to frighten or antagonize him, what to her were the plainest phases of human relations. So it was. And so, no doubt, it would always be.

The morning of the wedding was dank and gray. Grace awoke earlier than usual, dressed in a sticky half-light, and tramped through the living room to bang the coffee pot on the gas stove. A good deal of methodical noise always followed her risings and Anita, shaken out of sleep by the hangings and tramplings, stared at her resentfully from the daybed. Since the loss of her job Grace had developed a systematic mania for avoiding the purchase of meals. She collected lunch dates and she collected dinner dates and she had taken to fixing her own breakfasts. Anita could only admire the resourceful way in which she circumvented ill fortune, but in the mornings it was quite a nuisance.

The coffee boiled; Grace shut the bedroom door and spoke through the telephone, very low. By prearrangement, she was calling up her mother, who had exacted a promise to be at least told of the marriage. Grace said over the phone, "Ma? How—are you? ... Well, I'm calling according to schedule.... Yes. To-day." She gulped her coffee over the sink in the kitchenette. Although she went back and forth from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen, crossing the living room every few minutes, she avoided Anita, who lay with eyes half shut and the bedclothes pulled tight and warm about her. The latter was accustomed to Grace's intervals of self-sufficient hauteur. They meant that things were entirely satisfactory with Grace at the moment and she had no need of encouragement. Anita would ask no questions.

There were three rings of the bell and Anita heard Grace trample through the bedroom, down the short hall, and the sound of a brass key in a brass lock.

Letty was waiting downstairs in the chill, early-morning grimness that overlaid the street. People passed, silent, preoccupied, bent on work and nothing else. From the Fifth Avenue corner came gigantic hammer blows, hard, spiteful, even, one, then an—other—then an—other ... then the long, raucous shriek, the bellow tearing raw flesh from raw flesh, of a riveting machine. Grace was aware for the first time that the old houses near Fifth Avenue, guarded by plaster statues of lions and angels, by moldy lawns and rusted iron gates—the house where Diana Reece had once had a studio, where Grace had gone to draw fresh, sheer stockings over her white legs on the way to new, exciting dates with new, exciting men in the days of Harry Strauss; where she had borrowed Dee's key and met Blake in the days when he used to return to Brooklyn for dinner; where Anita had once lived as a ghost—those houses had vanished and the steely ribs of a skyscraper were being riveted together in their stead. They must have been demolished some time ago but Grace had never noticed.

"Look, those old houses are gone!" she exclaimed to Letty.

They paused and peered up and down the street. Two new structures had been built across the way, where there had once stood a modest red and white brick hotel and some rooming houses. They were of sandstone, beetling as far as possible over the sidewalk, projecting as high as possible into the sky. They were tipped with gold and the long strips of windows straight up and down, divided by strips of sandstone straight up and down, glinted iridescently. The old brownstone fronts and the old red-brick fronts and the small, white, rebuilt houses seemed compressed to suffocation between skyscrapers at the head and impending skyscrapers at the foot.

"The street's changing so," said Grace rather wistfully.

They turned the Sixth Avenue corner, continued past the El station and so down to Blake's house. Grace rang three times. This street was still serene with glossy shops composed behind their shut doors and their smooth displays, with a limousine dozing before the tall, white apartment building across the way and next to it a sedate little gray dwelling sleeping with shuttered windows behind a No Parking sign. All the speakeasies in all the basements of all the sere-looking brownstone houses were closed at this hour.

Blake came down rather pale and cold, a little hoarse, blinking. He never rose so early. They caught a taxi to the Tube station at Herald Square. Letty giggled. "We're off at the post," she said.

The train to Newark was not as deserted as they had expected and a headachy light oozed through it. What weird people to ride to Newark at such an hour—old women with newspaper bundles that somehow hinted to the senses of pickles, men in overalls with pitted noses. What for? "They can't all be going to get married," said Letty wonderingly.

Grace knew a lawyer, an old admirer, who had an office and political influence in Newark. She had arranged with him to prepare a secret way for them. They taxied around a gray-green park into a region of tall, sooty granite. Grace's friend was waiting in his office and his car was parked on a side street. They walked to it, Grace with the lawyer and Letty with Blake. Recovering from the blight of the chilly morning, Letty hugged Blake's arm. "He mustn't get away," she called back to Grace.

"By the way, have you got a ring?" said the lawyer suddenly.

Blake had never thought of it. They halted on the sidewalk and laughed and laughed.

"You could use mine," said Letty. "It married me good and fast."

But Grace's friend stopped at a jeweler's and insisted on buying one for her. A thin circlet of white gold. "It's a wedding present," he declared with a smirk.

Blake was still sleepy. Grace was nervous and curious.

The judge into whose chambers they were ushered mistook Letty for the bride. When his error was pointed out he turned but languidly to Grace, appearing to feel that she would do as well. He asked each whether they had been divorced. It seemed that he had a prejudice against marrying divorced people. He was so sure there would be a divorce somewhere—"He smells a divorce," Grace murmured to Letty—so sure that he would not have to bother after all, that he hardly looked up at them before this question.

There was an element of triumph in replying that Blake was a widower. Even the judge raised an eyebrow and devoted one whole glance of interest to Blake alone. "I thought he was going to say, 'Well, aren't you the lucky guy!'" giggled Letty afterward. In five minutes the ring had been slipped on Grace's finger. The judge noticed at last that she was good-looking and he kissed her.

"Ugh! One of those nasty, wet kisses," said Grace to Letty, scrubbing her mouth with a handkerchief the minute the door closed behind them.

The lawyer thought they ought to have a breakfast, but Letty had had hers and Grace wasn't hungry and Blake professed to distrust New Jersey coffee. The lawyer shook hands with them. He stood on a street corner, hesitating between sentiment and skepticism, and finally discarded the former as likely to amuse such sophisticated people. He wished them luck with a wink and left them.

"Well, you're married now," said Letty to Blake.

"I know. I've been married before," retorted Blake.

Grace and Blake were both disposed to be glum on the ride back. Even Letty was pensive. Though they joked and Grace sniggered and Letty giggled from time to time, the vows that had been uttered struck them all with a sense of disappointment. Beside the glamorous shadow of the unwritten, unspoken, yet irresistible promises that those two had been conscious of so long at every meeting, the vows, articulated at last, became disconcertingly meager and pallid, as a cherished thought, a lovely symbol in the mind, forms itself into but a sentence of the usual words, the common and oft-repeated figures of expression, when put down on paper.

Blake left them, after kissing Grace lightly, to finish his morning's sleep which the wedding had interrupted. Letty hailed a taxi, squeezed Grace's hand, and left to finish her morning's duties which the wedding had interrupted. And Grace, that having been attended to, set out in earnest to find herself a new job.

As the marriage was such a very secret one, Anita did not learn of it for several days.

CHAPTER TWO

Though it had not been discussed between Blake and Grace, it was taken for granted that the difference in their status would be only one of convenience. There was even a certain novelty? a certain spice, in the fact that they could now listen to the footstep on the stairs with the serenity of those who know that a wedding certificate can, hey, presto! be produced, like the serenity of a magician who knows that he can at will produce the vindicatory rabbit from his coat sleeve. For enough of the tradition in which they had been reared lingered on, like the rites of a religion in which no one now believes or the grammar of a language that no one now uses, to necessitate the devices of secrecy when both the reason for and the secrecy itself were gone.

A honeymoon certainly had no place in their ideas. Soon after the wedding Blake and Jerry went off to Havana. Afterward, Jerry refused to believe in the marriage on this account; he said no bride would have let a bridegroom roam so freely. When finally convinced, he could not recover from the injustice of a state of things that caused him to have more trouble with the girls he didn't marry than Blake had with the girls he did marry.

On Blake's return it happened that Grace had an opportune invitation to visit friends opportunely far away. There was no reason for her to refuse, as she claimed the same freedom that Blake did. In consequence, when she came home their reunion crystallized into a motor trip with the Moseses. Grace was rather amused at the simplicity of a trick, not quite conscious on her part—and such an old-fashioned trick! She supposed she would have to plan for these marital vacations, exactly as Beatrice Fairfax advised.

Blake had bought a car. Years of suppressed desire seemed to lurk behind his proud engrossment with it. He would keep to the wheel each day as long as possible, ignoring the protests of Harold and Letty, who had had to bring their child, and becoming more and more irritated by the fretfulness of the child. Grace, too, began the journey by annoying him. It was raining when they started, and after lunch in a small Connecticut town Grace and Blake went into the first shop to buy a slicker for her. The rural shopkeeper looked from one to the other in some surprise when Grace opened her purse to pay. Blake pushed in front of her and threw the bills on the counter. He walked out of the shop, Grace following, smiling, sighing resignedly to herself. They were so silent for some time afterward that Letty finally demanded to know the reason. But Blake would not answer.

Grace said quizzically, "It's because I can't get used to being—legitimate."

And, in truth, the restiveness between them had its source, as she guessed, in the uncertainty of her own attitude. She had long ago accepted the fact that Blake never wanted all of her at any one time, that he was scared and bewildered by and resentful, too, of any hint of a self that lay beyond the part which suited his mood of the period, refusing to regard it as another hue in the spectrum of a personality but considering it, in the way in which a man considers those traits in a woman which do not coincide with his own expectations, as blameworthy or inconsistent.

On this journey, the first they had ever been able to take together, Grace was abstracted with searching for what part of her antagonized Blake now, so as to eliminate it and substitute that which he might expect now. She had not thought he wished her to act "wifely," as she would put it to herself. Indeed, she had felt that while, with her, he saw no other way that could so fittingly make the world take for granted their attitude toward each other, the marriage had come before he had quite had time to think that he had decided for himself—that he was irritated by the idea of compulsion—and it behooved her to keep her state of wifehood as much in the background as possible. The scene in the shop seemed to offer a clue of another sort. But it was hard to reconcile his offense at a small motion of independence before the world with the gloomy silence in which she remembered he had received news of the final loss of her job. She had not blamed him then at all, discerning in his silence his memories of an economic reliance that had oppressed him in the past. She was well aware that her attitude of self-sustenance in every way had been one of her chief attractions at first, in contrast to the then irksome attitude of his wife.

Not yet having come to any conclusion about his present mood, she took refuge in patience. She did not hear, she did not see, she was as unobtrusive as possible, she said nothing. It rained during the first two days in which they traveled about Connecticut and Massachusetts.

When they reached the seaside hotel that Blake had chosen, the sun came out, a glad and powerful ally that caused Grace to loosen her armor. She came down to breakfast cheerfully next morning, fortified by a marcel. Letty and Harold were feeding their child with a great deal of parental care and merriment. Grace did not mind. She was fond of the little girl and laughed as indulgently as Letty when the child banged her spoon on the plate or dropped oatmeal with a pensive preoccupation over the tablecloth. On Blake's appearance, they had all eaten and were sitting back, in the sun.

"Hullo," said Grace, quite forgetting her disguise.

And Letty, who had been taking her cue from Grace, commented briskly, "How come you're up so early in the morning?"

"Probably wants to get some golf. The links here are good," said Harold.

They all looked toward him eagerly to share their good spirits.

"I don't want to get some golf," said Blake with emphasis. "I did want to get some sleep, but Grace being one of those risers with the dawn, I suppose that's out of the question."

Grace's eyes turned slowly from one to the other of the Moseses as she adopted her special tone, at once resigned and explanatory, for Blake's idiosyncrasies. "Blake has such a hate on mornings. I tried not to make any noise," she murmured. "I walked about in stocking feet, honest to Ga-awd!"

"Is that so? They sounded more like bricks," said Blake. He examined her closely. "Was it for that marcel you got up? I might have known. That will be Grace's initial step on entering Heaven, won't it, Grace? As soon as St. Peter opens the gates you'll sweep past to locate, by instinct, the nearest beauty parlor, won't you, Grace? How does your instinct work in that respect, by the way? Is it by the sense of smell you locate them or by a sense of direction? Tell us."

This was one of Blake's humors which Grace recognized and knew how to combat, or rather how not to combat. She was even a little gratified at his acute observation of details concerning her; if habit had sharpened, it had at least not dulled his awareness of her. She could even smile at the pungent truth of some of his remarks, albeit it was a rueful smile.

"And he used to rush up to me on the street and say how beautiful I was," she interpolated under her breath to the others.

Blake snorted.

"If you want to quarrel on your honeymoon, far be it from me to prevent you," said Letty. "Harold and I started ours with a grand scrap. Remember?"

It was Harold's turn to look rueful.

"There were some awfully cute bellboys in the hotel," explained Letty with a giggle, "and Harold thought I paid too much attention to them. But don't fight about a marcel," she besought Blake. "Save that for when you've been married a long time like us. It'll come in handy then. Now, it seems so—so picking!"

That last had been a mistake, as Letty understood instantly. Anger with Blake was a state of ice, not of heat. Instead of quickly bursting with it, he slowly froze about his anger, locking it securely within. They were all chilled by him, even the child who had been trying to reach his place across the table with her spoon. He glowered at her so that she began to wail. Blake rose and flung down his napkin. "I'd better leave this happy domestic circle," he said, and walked away.

Harold was too wise to open his mouth. Across the table the two girls glanced at each other and Grace shrugged so as to convey her bafflement to Letty. Nevertheless, she went quickly upstairs and subjected her face and hair to the mirror. Any criticism of her looks, even this which she knew arose from other reasons, was sure to terrify Grace. The wave was a bit too tight. This reflection filled her with an unease which all Letty's reassurances could not still, which a pale yellow felt hat, pressed down till the brim met her eyebrows and, in the sun, enhancing her skin to a brilliance that made it a plastic materialization of the brilliant air and deepening her eyes to soft midnight, could not remove. Only the visual admiration of the lobby and the beach, the impression which she made on other people, finally brought back her composure.

She wore her hat hopefully to lunch. But Blake, though freshened by golf, still clung to his ill-will; there was no one like Blake for remembering what had annoyed him. As the child had been the last focal point of irritation, he surveyed her mannerisms very coldly. Grace thought it had been a pity to bring the child, but after all it was Blake who had planned this trip for all of them. If anyone's fault, it was his, and she rebelled against the shafts that, flung at her, she knew were meant for the Moseses and the child. Letty knew too and was tired of being tactful. "What an oil can of a husband you turned out to be," she said crisply.

The long day drew to the close which might have been foretold. Letty and Harold sat morosely over the dinner table; the child had been put to bed, and Grace was in a state of mounting and stifling resentment. She was so very quiet that she might have been on the verge of tears. Blake thought so. She went up to their room very suddenly. When, some time later, he followed, he expected to find her in that condition which would finally thaw a mood of which he himself was tiring but which he had, from early childhood, learned to rely on others to evaporate for him.

Grace was just finishing her evening toilette. It always soothed her to look after herself physically. She slipped a barrette about her hair at the nape of her neck, smoothed down the waves which enclosed the now clear forehead, the cheeks that seemed rounder, in a sleek, soft frame. She was pleased with the effect and studied it for a few moments in the glass. She turned to him and would have spoken but remembered and swallowed the words. He spoke for her.

She considered the glass without expression, very still.

He spoke again with a sneer.

"All right," she said evenly. "You can torment me as much as you like. But when it gets too much for me, I have a way—to make you sorry."

He was so taken aback that he laughed out loud.

"What'll you do?" he said.

She made a small, menacing nod to her reflection in the glass. "I know what I can do."

This time she planted her eyes full on him, eyes so dry, huge, shooting such a triumphant brilliance at him from the hard pupils and the distended, gleaming whites, that he blinked. He watched them with a half-amused curiosity turning into a vague alarm. "Tell me. What will you do?"

"Nope. I won't tell you," she said. She curved her lips about the secret which seemed to give her a malicious pleasure. "Only, if you ever make me do it, you'll be sorry."

He remained silent now, she could see, really worried. Stealing looks at her from time to time, the set of her face scared him. And she was so dry-eyed. It was not that Grace cried easily, but he seemed to recollect that no fault of his, or at least nothing that had been a grave fault to her, had been revealed to her hitherto without his being able to measure the extent of her hurt and his pardon in the melting of her eyes and the upwelling and flow of her tears. Now he was at a loss. She had not been hurt—could not be hurt—as her actions and demeanor declared to him—so how could he sue for pardon? A phrase he had once used to her, in the need of the moment, not half-meaning it but using it because it rose to his lips, returned to thrust itself at him, to become fatefully clear—like an old prophecy. "When you don't cry any more, I'll know you don't care any more." And this explanation was so apparent to him that he grew quiet and pale with it. He waited, sunk in imagination, watching her move about the room, more and more anxious for some sign that might reassure him.

At length, as she made no such sign, he was forced to remind her of what he had once said. The words dropped from his lips involuntarily, as a tentative inquiry. But, falling slowly from his lips, stumbling across such a wide distance, they reached her, these words with their old associations, like old friends in some dire trouble whom one must at once, without question, comfort and aid. So she was placated.

He had behaved very well after that, Grace told Anita. She said with a smile that changed into the motions of her deliberate snigger on further thought: "I had no idea what I would do, you know. I just said it on the spur of the moment to stop him. He was getting—unbearable. And—you know how—you can frighten a person more by a threat if you don't—don't define it? If they don't know just—where—they're going to be hit? Blake was very scared. He pretended to tease me about it afterward, but just the same I could see—he had it on his mind.'"

She paused. Her lips drew together in a resolute line and in her new, slower tone there lingered a trace of vindictiveness. She had just picked up a clock from the dresser and her fingers grasped it tightly as she faced Anita.

"But when he kept asking me what I meant to do, joking about 'my little mystery,'" she added, "I started to wonder what I really could do—if it came to that—what really would punish him. And now—I know." She halted again, savoring her victorious secret with her eyes and her smile.

She would have continued even without the prompting question, had to continue, would have ignored and overridden any interruption, like an actress finishing her speech regardless of all distractions.

"It occurred—to me," she said, and articulated each phrase slowly, "that—all I would have to do would be to go to his mother, who thinks—he is so very perfect, and tell her the whole story—how we lived together long before Edith left him, in what circumstances the baby was born, and why he didn't—get called Junior!"

She laid the clock down firmly on top of a suitcase and concluded, "She'd never recover from the shock."

"Oh, you wouldn't actually do that," said Anita.

"I might," said Grace with a shrug.

They were packing up to leave the apartment. Grace as usual "knew someone" who would take it off their hands, as it had been decided that she should move into Blake's place.

"I don't think I'll take that—or that," Grace said, flinging old things into a corner. "Can you use this?" She held up a dressing gown that Anita had long admired.

"What do you want for it?" said Anita.

Grace hesitated. "It's old—but it's still good." She was torn between her first generous impulse to give and the later impulse, fruit of experience, not to give without a return. Anita had always been careful, she hardly knew why, not to permit Grace's first impulses to win, never to accept without a return, and the return she preferred to make, the return that seemed to her least complicated, was of money. She hazarded a price. It was too much, but somehow she had always rather give Grace too much—in money—than too little. It eased her conscience.

Grace handed over the dressing gown. She closed the last suitcase. She felt a little uncomfortable about accepting the money, Anita could see, and when she had put it into her purse she said suddenly, with the effect of having found a way to make the transaction fair, "It's not time for the moving men yet. Let's go down. I'll buy you—a soda."

Anita smiled.

They stepped over the luggage. Grace searched for her keys. From the hallway Anita could see the sad, dead spaces of the living room—piles of shapeless furniture, heaps of miscellaneous débris.

With a final bang, the door swung to.

CHAPTER THREE

They were to continue to see a great deal of each other, as Grace was not the sort of old-fashioned spouse who is swallowed up by her husband's life. And at first she did manage to meet Anita often, usually when she was troubled and wore what Anita had begun to think of as her "bird of prey" aspect, the signal for some new worry or some new need. She couldn't make any dates, she confided in a tone which tried to be humorous while her eyes exhibited her very real concern. Admirers, both long-established and potential, had suddenly vanished. Or, if she chanced upon one, as she did several times on the street and in restaurants when Anita was with her, their withdrawal was obvious enough to embarrass Anita. They were glad to see Grace; they looked at her with pleasure. Then, when, on leaving, Grace fixed her eyes on them and said, "Why don't you—call me up—sometime?" or, with a measured insistence, "Let's have—a date soon—shall we?" their uneasiness became apparent in the wandering of their eyes and the hasty indefiniteness of their replies.

"Do you see? They couldn't run from me worse if I had the plague!" exclaimed Grace.

Another time, at a dinner party, she sat next to a one-time boy friend who had not been entirely tractable in his day because of doubts as to her status. Such overtures as she cared to make now, however, had been circumspectly passed by. "My Gawd! You ought to have seen the respect with which he treated me," said Grace, with some alarm in spite of her satisfaction.

She applied to Anita: "Letty says it's because I've just been married and they think I can't want to make dates with other men, that I'm only—kidding them." Her eyes implored Anita for serious consideration.

Anita thought it might be so.

"If they only knew!" wailed Grace.

"Blake has a girl now," she said disconsolately. "A nice little chorus girl. He has quite a crush on her. He says it's such fun to use the old line and tell the old stories to some girl who drinks them in as if they were new." An indulgent smile hovered about her mouth. "I know—just how he feels."

After a pause she was struck by a thought which, it occurred to Anita, probably had been in the back of her mind all the time. She raised her eyes and tested the ground with her phrases. "I thought—I might even start something—with Dennis," she said. "I'm that desperate!" She added, "That is, if you don't mind."

Anita could not help chuckling. "You'd better apply to Dennis."

"Oh, Dennis!" said Grace confidently.

But Anita was not so sure, since Dennis was in the throes of the very fate Grace had foreseen. The very girl of her prophecy apparently, a sweet, firm little creature, whose tactics Anita noted with admiration, had Dennis in tow, or so nearly in tow that it didn't matter. He went about proclaiming over convivial tables, "To think that a sweet little girl like that should care for a bum like me!"

However, it was not long before Grace came to call on Anita in a happier frame of mind; she had a job, a better job than the old. She wanted to borrow Anita's house in order to entertain a new swain that evening. Blake had planned to stay in and work, thus making her own home unavailable.

"It feels so strange to have to borrow apartments again," she complained. "Ironic, isn't it? For the first time since I left Ma I haven't—even a nook—I can feel is quite my own."

She looked around Anita's room with the disappointment with which it always filled her. The house stood in the old Chelsea district on a block that was still pimpled with tenement houses. Though it shone to the point of bedizenment with varnish and fresh paint, it was a rickety, meager little house. And Anita's home was so bare—bare floors, nearly bare walls, painted furniture and not much of it that seemed stripped to the bone; color, charming and harmonious color, that decorated instead of softening. The vague, comfortable, and comforting quality in a room that makes one sink into it and wish to stay in it, the quality meant by "lived in," which has nothing to do with taste, which means only perhaps that the room is accustomed to people, needs them, is ready to adapt itself under their eyes to whatever they require of it—this quality was missing here. Grace was always a little on the verge of leaving in Anita's home.

The second summer of their marriage, the Andrews' went to London to put on one of Blake's shows. Grace's return was heralded by such a vigorous determination to get Anita to go apartment hunting with her and by such a mound of worries in connection with her father and mother-in-law, who had moved East with Blake's child, that the mere sound of her voice began to bring to Anita the immediate, warning reflex, "What does she want now?" By the following year, Anita barely knew that Blake had thought of taking a house in Great Neck, buying a house, perhaps, as Grace informed her dejectedly in the course of a sudden telephone call. This overture brought the same reflex with it, had the sound of a distress call from a proud liner to a humble little tramp steamer which never would have got the least attention otherwise. Anita had long ago resolved not to make initial advances to Grace because, unless these came at the propitious moment, Grace did not trouble to disguise their inconvenience. A remnant of gratitude still caused her to feel that she ought to come when whistled to, but she was so disinclined that Grace had been compelled to offer inducements other than that personal company which is usually considered sufficient for old friends.

"Well, since you can't have dinner with me," she had said at last incredulously, "if we do take the house, you must come out for a week-end. I'll let you know."

Nor did Grace forget. Anita was an assistant now, instead of a secretary, and one day, in the absence of the chief, the employment bureau's press agent "hung" a story on to her. The afternoon that story appeared, Grace called up to congratulate and to give a definite invitation. It seemed more than a coincidence to Anita. What a perfect scent for success Grace had! Nevertheless she felt ashamed almost at once of so cynical an appraisement and scolded herself. It was kind of Grace to ask her out; it was indeed a long time since they had seen each other. She agreed to call for Grace on Saturday afternoon.

Grace was working for a theatrical producer and had her name on the elevator directory, her name on the door, a stenographer and a room almost to herself, concrete evidences of her rise which she felt she ought to acknowledge ironically so that no one could think she was proud of them or that they really meant anything to her.

A new musical comedy was being cast and, as Grace shared her office with the man who "saw" people for it, she with her appurtenances was almost swamped by a collection of show folks who stood, sat, chatted, were quiet, yet nevertheless had all the same attitude and the same expression—the patient attitude, the waiting face. The man who saw people, of course, had not yet returned from lunch, might not return at all that day, as Anita heard Grace reply a dozen times within the few minutes. At the same time, she was carrying on a telephone conversation with the press agent for a charity ball who wished her to urge the cast of We Are Three to attend for the good of the firm—and the ball. While Anita waited, she concluded the talk, scribbled some notes on her date pad, and declared, "That's all I'm going to do for Sweet Charity this bright Saturday afternoon." She picked up a large, pale blue silky straw hat from her desk and made for the door, only to be summoned back by a fresh ring of the phone. It was the dramatic editor of the Weehawken, New Jersey, High School Gazetteer, demanding free tickets to review We Are Three. Grace rolled her eyes in despair and said politely that she was sorry but this was impossible as the show was selling out. "You see," she confided gravely, "I would be glad to—oblige you but I am not even allowed tickets for the daily paper people.... Yes.... Later perhaps.... Good-bye. Come along," she gasped to Anita, "before any more pests call up."

Once outside, she tucked her hat over her hair, using the glass of the elevator shaft as a mirror, and heaved a great sigh of relief.

"I can't bear to be around when there's casting," she said. "All this week I've been grabbing my hat at odd hours and dashing out of the office. They're so—pitiful! It's no good telling them Mr. Whoozis won't be in, probably'll never be in. They won't believe. And they won't go. I don't see how you can stand having people come to you for jobs day in, day out."

"Oh, well... It's rather nice anyhow when you have the jobs to distribute," said Anita. "You ought to know. You've found work for plenty of people."

Grace sniggered. "Yes. Blake says I ought to open—an employment bureau on the side. I've even got into the bad habit of suggesting girls I run across for his shows."

She was wearing a pale blue silk blouse and skirt, minutely tucked and pleated by way of flaunting its simplicity. The color, so unusual for her, had by its novelty the effect of emphasizing anew the hazy glow which her skin shed under the summer sun, the gentle fullness which her cheeks now had. She looked lovelier than ever, Anita thought, and said so.

"That's a nice dress you have on, too," said Grace, scrutinizing the green of Anita's summer jersey. "The nicest I've ever seen on you. I suppose it's—by way of celebration?"

The warning signal jerked in Anita's brain while she hated herself for it. She was liking Grace so much at the moment.

"And that reminds me," went on Grace, "speaking of jobs and all. You wouldn't need—a stenographer—would you? My little cousin is looking for work."

"No. We've already got one," said Anita shortly. After a moment she amended: "It's not exactly in my line; we're only supposed to get work for adolescents or the handicapped. But I run across all kinds of jobs. I'll—I'll watch out for her."

"I'll let you know," were words Anita had sworn would never, never pass her lips.

They had still to call for Blake at a theater where he was rehearsing a road company of his last show—he now staged his own shows, Grace explained.

They walked a few blocks which seemed surprisingly gay and sunny. White structures had sprung up everywhere, taking the place of the squat old tortured frontages—a slender and glittering generation, slimly arrogant, flaunting a hard chastity of line in a sunlight that, striking full on every revealed angle, could not abash but only made them more shining. The theater was new and also white. The asphalt in front of it had but just been laid and returned to the sun a million infinitesimal sparks, as if it were set with diamantes.

They went around by the stage entrance and found some chorus girls issuing brightly and, just within the open door, talking to Jerry Barker, a man of whom Anita could observe at first solely the crease made by fat above the pink-striped collar of his shirt. Coming nearer, she was disconcerted to recognize Blake. She had seen less of him than of Grace and had not met him at all these last months. Hitherto, a slight expansiveness in his bearing and appearance, an ease of flesh and movement due to prosperity, had been attractive. But all Anita could think of now was how the flesh had finally spread and filled every inch of his fine gray suit. Her expression must have been obvious. Blake said almost at once, in the unconscious avowal of one who knows just what the fault is for which he desires to forestall blame, "I'm going to reduce." However, at the same time he looked at Anita hopefully, as if trying to judge from her face whether, after all, it would really be necessary to reduce. To Anita's surprise, he remarked, "You look well yourself" (the first time she had attracted so much of social amiability from Blake), and asked them to wait with Jerry while he fetched his car from the garage.

They were waiting thus when the principals tripped out. All of them greeted Jerry and several greeted Grace. Then followed a few chorus men and finally a last relay of chorus girls. A few of these also knew Grace and waved to her as they walked into the street. One girl left her companion for a moment and dashed over.

"How nice you look, Grace!" she exclaimed, running her eyes over the large hat and the pale blue of the dress.

"Thank you."

"You look so stylish!" added the girl. "Real up-to-date," she pronounced with an approving nod of her head, and sped away.

There had been a frigid note in Grace's voice which did not quite accord with the quizzical glance she gave Anita. "I suppose I'm just another little-wife-in-navy-blue-georgette to them. Probably because I wear sleeves in the daytime," she murmured.

CHAPTER FOUR

On the way out, Grace and Anita sat in the back seat, Jerry in front with Blake. Grace said that Letty had been asking about her and that soon they must "all get together." Only, it was difficult to arrange for week-ends; there were so many people one had to invite.

Anita was embarrassed, sensing a subtle apology which Grace, in fact, did feel that she owed. Grace had always declared that when she had a house Anita would be free to come and go in it. She had found, however, that a hostess who wishes her hospitality to be effective is like a producer who must choose his players for the contributions each can make to the success of the show. Anita was simply "not the type." Grace didn't believe Anita cared. She remembered that she had asked her up now and then for dinner when no other people would be present and Anita had not seemed very eager. Nor had Anita ever shown much interest in the crowd. But she certainly did not wish Anita to feel, because of the necessary gaps in their social relationship, that Anita had been dropped as a friend.

Anita turned the subject by inquiring after Letty.

Letty did not look so well, Grace said; her hair had a lot of gray in it. "She says all she seems to do now is take care of her child and sit around and watch 'us active people.' But Harold is getting to be—quite the ladies' man. He sends roses to Evelyn Linden whenever they have a date."

"To Evelyn Linden? I shouldn't think Harold would be interested in Evelyn Linden."

"Harold and Evelyn Linden?" said Grace, and took on her remote look of having and withholding secret information. "Is that going on? Oh, my! Apace!"

Anita knew of old that Grace's omniscience demanded an audience. But there was a tinge of satisfaction, almost of malice, in her tone which took Anita by surprise. It was almost as if she enjoyed the advantage over people of knowing something about them—liked to "have something on them."

"Evelyn Linden as good as told Letty," went on Grace after a pause, "that if it weren't for their friendship the affair would be—serious."

"And what did Letty say?"

"Said it was all right with her. But I don't think she cares for the idea especially. I notice she and Evelyn don't see so much of each other. However—that is not why Letty looks as she does. It's because—she has no one now. She's hunting around, as it were. I've always said there was nothing like love to improve one's appearance," she concluded with unction.

Anita was aware that Grace glanced at her expectantly. She made no answer. She had begun to suffer from the same strange, harried tension in Grace's presence that she had felt at their last meeting, as if she were running a sort of race with Grace's troubles, flying before Grace's inevitable confidences, yet not being able to avoid glimpses of them out of the corner of her eye (as one subconsciously follows the movements of a pursuer) and at the same time being obliged instinctively to protect her own.

It was a relief anyhow not to be shown through the house, a temporary one and therefore, though lavish enough, not considered worth the showing. Anita had decided that the showing of houses was a mania inherent in suburbs, to which even people who would never dream of exhibiting a city apartment succumbed. She was grateful not to be forced to eulogize her surroundings. The living room was large and cool as a cave, with half-drawn shades and curtains of a thin beige silk through which the sun oozed yellowly, and the couch and armchairs, disposed about the brick fireplace, allowed one to sink as into feather beds. There was an enormous piano and an only slightly less enormous radio and a glossy phonograph from which Grace drew the melodious sorrows of a Negro spiritual. Grace had adopted "Water Boy" to be intelligently and critically ecstatic over as Anita recollected she had once adopted the plump little f's of a well-known illustrator, and she insisted on analyzing the effect of "Water Boy" upon her soul as she had once insisted on analyzing the effect of the little f's.

They ate Virginia ham and spinach and marshmallowed sweet potatoes and a pudding of a golden flakiness that had slices of rose gelatin tucked into it. There was a white-aproned Negro cook in the background and a red-cheeked youngster, a "mother's helper," who waited on table.

Blake had apparently turned over his child to Mother Andrews (Grace's name for her mother-in-law) as the result of an old agreement that he was to be relieved of all that harassed and be tendered only that which could be enjoyed. She was mild, pretty, faded, with thin lips, and she sat obscurely at table. The boy, Jamie, sat by her and received from her, in an undertone, the few corrections which he disregarded with an almost exact copy of Blake's manner of disregard. Grace had said that Jamie was just like Blake.

He was still a little shy with Grace, and she was not so foolish as to throw herself abjectly, sweating with the anxiety for approval, on a child's mercies. She had once explained to Anita that she believed the best way to get his affection was, with a child as with a grown-up, always to leave some concrete evidence of good-will. When Jamie had first come East, and she used to visit him with Blake, she had never appeared empty-handed. She still returned to the formula from time to time. To-day she had brought him a book of stories and pictures of pirates.

After dinner he came to her side in the living room and took her hand, looking sideways in embarrassment and flushing a little, in token of thanks. He wished to have the pictures explained. The two girls put their heads together to concoct suitable versions under the watchful eyes of Mother Andrews. She said nary a word. But Anita, as Grace had managed to convey while they stood for a moment by the piano and waited for the others to leave the dining room, had used the word "devil" at table in front of the child. It seemed that Mother Andrews had revised certain words for Jamie. A devil must not be termed a "devil" before him but suffered a saccharine change and become a "monkey."

The child listened with wide-open, clear blue eyes, across which a flash, caused by a deep breath, shot now and again. They knew he was pleased only because he offered, with his sideways look and flush, to show them how he "took falls." They went to the door and watched him in the fading light tumble down on the cropped lawn many times and regain his balance gracefully, swiftly. "You'll have to disown him," said Grace to Blake. "He'll turn into a hoofer yet." Blake made a face. Hoofers were people he professed most to detest. The child looked from one to the other avidly, not understanding but sensing another reserve that perhaps ought to hedge him in.

However, in spite of his outward detachment, Blake looked up when Jamie was sent to bed and waited and bent his cheek forward for the good-night kiss. The boy went on to Grace and kissed her, too, then lingered before Anita, who had lit a cigarette. It was the cigarette that held his attention. No doubt he had been told that every cigarette was a nail in one's coffin. He looked like that. At length he made up his mind not to notice her. He hastened by without so much as a murmur, turning and peering at her as he made his farewells to the others and sending her one last, clear-blue, reticent gaze from behind the banister at the foot of the stairs. Then he could bear it no longer and revealed the judgment which had been on the tip of his tongue. "Ladies don't smoke," he said.

Anita was irritated enough to ask, "Who told you that?" despite Grace's optic warning.

"It said so in a book," he replied securely.

"Is that so?" said Anita, less to the child than for the benefit of Mother Andrews. "There are a lot of other things in books. For instance, it says in a book, 'Children should be seen and not heard.' Do you believe that?"

They all laughed, even Mother Andrews, and the child himself saw the point and bent his head a little ruefully. But no one spoke. Blake wore an air of assent, rather than otherwise, to the child's prudishness.

Mother Andrews went up to bed soon after, making various tactful signals to her husband to remove himself also. She was very good about that, Grace whispered, in contrast to Dad Andrews, whom Grace liked better but whose delight in the company of young folks made him often far too stationary. He sat on for a long time that night, nice-looking, gentle, youngish, and rather wistful except when the numerous opinions he had formed about the theater and the traffic situation, even in so short a period, led him to inject himself into the talk. Blake set his chin and ignored the interruptions until the constant calls of his mother from above finally tore Dad away. Then Grace, sighing with relief, wished to know what they meant to do with the rest of the evening. "Marie Drum wants us to come over and see her house," she said, to Anita's alarm. The men debated whether or not they would work.

"Or we might go over to Olive Lytell's," added Grace. "I had to see her at the theater last night and she said she was giving a party."

"Well, why don't you and Anita go over while we work?" suggested Blake with unwonted kindness.

But Grace said decidedly that she would not think of going without him.

They went to the Drums' after all because Marie and Ted Drum burst into the house to fetch them. Ted Drum was—had been—a song-and-dance man and had been featured in one of Blake's shows. He was dark, curly-haired. Grace introduced him as "one of those freaks of Nature who can't read notes and never took a lesson in their lives but who can play any tune on the piano by ear." Marie Drum rhapsodized on the subjects of furniture, landscape gardening, the prices of trees, and the difficulties of getting in touch with their architect. "He's not at his office for weeks and he doesn't answer his telephone. Of course, they say he's a dipso and his private life is smeared all over the place, but I haven't found anyone to suit us so well. The only way to get him is to send him a night letter to his home, I've found. He's got to open a telegram."

"We must remember that," said Blake to Grace—and to the Drums, "I was thinking of getting him myself."

Finally, it seemed easiest to go and inspect the Drums' house.

All bungalows made of pink stucco were exactly like all other bungalows made of pink stucco to Anita. This pinkness stood against the sky, dark blue as it should be, and over the house a slim moon was poised, a wispy, silvery circlet. Marie Drum pointed to it with pride, as if it had been a stage property. Such a nice moon for a pink stucco house! Anita followed in resignation, observing the house from every angle, observing it from top to bottom, observing "cute" staircases and the patchwork quilt in the guest room and the Colonial furnishings of the bedroom and the polished purity of the kitchen and the rosy tiles and pink-embroidered towels of the bathroom, while Marie Drum tripped on feathery feet (she had been a dancer), in a huge black hat which never left her head even in her own home, tripped before them up and down stairs, opening doors and explaining antiques. Grace asked questions about the furniture, after which she made an excuse to Anita, "I may have to choose some myself soon." The Drums had overlooked no accessory that could contribute to their domestic pride. They had a dog and they even had a visitors' book.

The living room was strictly and stiffly Colonial. Balanced sedately on the high-bred chairs, one breathed one's thankfulness to catch sight of a grand piano—and then a radio—and then a ping-pong set. And the white bearskin before the fireplace, spontaneous effusion from the hearts of Ted and Marie Drum in the midst of glacial floor spaces, was like a dear, dear old friend.

While Ted sat down to the piano and strummed popular tunes without ever having taken a lesson, Marie fluttered about, coralling them to sign the visitors' book. Grace took up the pen first, unwillingly, and signed herself, "Grace Kline."

Marie objected. "Oh, no. Sign your full name. What do you want to join the Lucy Stone League for?"

"I don't want to," said Grace. "I don't have to. I can't get anyone to call me anything but Grace Kline. When the grocer says 'Mrs. Andrews,' I jump. Really."

She peeped toward Blake, who was listening. "Well, since you insist..." she remarked and put down an "Andrews."

Marie Drum stood over her. "And write something—write something bright under Remarks." Grace hesitated, then added a dash after "Grace Kline Andrews" and wrote "—By Request!" with a flourish. She watched Blake read it and handed him the pen. He set down firmly, "Blake Andrews," and in the Remarks column he wrote, with a snort, "—By Command!" and threw down the pen.

Marie Drum had to ponder over the comments for a few moments before she saw the point. Then she burst into surprised laughter, calling to the others to come and see. "You little eggs!" she cried. An elaborate smirk was pasted to Grace's face. She was neither abashed nor hurt. It was nothing, she knew. He was quite comfortable, perfectly satisfied. This was just a last obeisance, demanded by the convention of his youthful creed, toward an unattainable freedom which it had been part of the creed to yearn for, but which he had sagaciously never made any attempt to attain and which he would not know what to do with if it could be attained. She sat down by Blake on the bearskin and closed her two hands over his arm in an arch attitude of consolation. They still had moments of embracing in public, or rather of staging their carefully burlesqued yet absorbed caresses, but these were no longer so compelling to watch, no longer acted on the audience as reminders of a love which transcended all obstacles. The audience was even a little impatient; after all, Blake and Grace could very well now embrace in private.

Jerry, who was a good musician, pushed Ted off the piano stool and began to play a song from the show he and Blake were working on.

"What do you think of that?"

Ted nodded and asserted that it ought to be a hit. It made him think, he said, of "Your Kisses Are Blisses," which had been their biggest hit.

"Funny about that," said Jerry reminiscently. "We had every song in the show picked for a hit but that. Blake was all for 'Is There Anything a Little Girl Can't Do?'"

Blake disengaged himself. "I'm still for that," he called. "It's a good lyric and a good tune."

"Maybe it was too much for them to remember," suggested Ted. "A tune ought to be simple, that's my idea."

Marie interrupted to say that this didn't always follow, naming one composer of many hits whose tunes were often complicated. They turned on her in mockery.

"Yeh, but what tunes!" said Jerry. "That fella knows his classics."

They began a rapt discussion of lyrics, tunes, what the public likes, and of what exactly had made "Your Kisses Are Blisses" so popular. Grace kept still, with her eyes fixed on space. During a pause she raised them and articulated gravely, "There's—something I thought—to tell you, Jerry." They all watched her.

"There's one thing that all hit tunes have in common," she pronounced, "whatever the other ingredients may be. They may or may not have words of one syllable, though they usually have. But whatever else they are, they're all—definite. For instance, 'Who—Who stole my heart away?' Or, 'Your Kisses—Your kisses are blisses.' One thing to settle in your mind."

There was a long silence while they all somehow felt that they should ruminate on this. Ted roused himself with an effort to prepare drinks. Marie Drum said, "We all go to bed early here," so they stayed only long enough to have some highballs and to play a few games of ping-pong. And then, since it was merely midnight, they trooped forth to a lunch wagon near the station to terminate the night life of Great Neck fittingly with sandwiches and coffee.

CHAPTER FIVE

A real-estate agent called for Blake soon after the lunch-breakfast to show him some land. Grace, plumped on the couch, was a spot of orange severely vivid in the midst of the Sunday morning frowsiness of the living room—flattened, disordered cushions and untidy carpets; a small green bowl on the piano spilling cigarette stubs and ashes. She was scanning the Sunday papers to see which of her publicity stories had got in. Every now and then she pounced on a sheet, stuck the point of her scissors through it, and neatly clipped an item.

"I'm busy collecting li'l items," she said sardonically, "li'l scraps of pa-a-aper! You go with Blake, Anita, and see the town."

So, from the back seat of the car, Anita solemnly surveyed the town. There seemed to be quite a lot of pleasant green grass and blue sky and sunshine and houses on hills and houses at the foot of slopes and houses along smooth streets and many vacant lots between. Occasionally, Blake stopped the car in front of one of the latter, while he and Jerry and the real-estate agent discussed its special virtues. They drove a good way out to a point of marshy land through which the Sound had filtered in pale streamlets and tiny pools. To one side an arm of the Sound stretched, long, blue, and deep, bearing yachts on its tranquil surface and many boats and a pier. Blake indicated the narrow fringe which was Sands Point Casino and another fringe which was Port Washington. A second agent joined them and stood with one foot on the running board, calling attention to the beauties of the landscape and suggesting other spots which they might see. The car faced the water, which drew their eyes over and beyond it with the insistence of all horizons. Even the real-estate agents gazed over their shoulders once in a while.

"Take Lake Success now," said one reflectively. "Been there yet? That's a mighty pretty country around Lake Success."

Anita, who had paid little heed, looked up quickly. The agent's face was quite blank as he went on to describe another section of this countryside. She glanced at the other agent and from him to Jerry. They were both absorbed in the talk. She grinned to herself and caught a sudden answering glint of amusement from a corner of Blake's eye, accentuated by the slightest turn of his head, so that it was like a wink between them. Anita at once forgave him the crease of fat above the collar of his shirt, blue-striped to-day.

They returned past a huge stone castle that resembled a church. Blake halted before it and told Anita to bow her head in contemplation. "That's Jack Omley's house," he said, mentioning a wealthy lyric writer. "The house that jack built. Must have cost around two hundred thousand. I go and look at it when I want inspiration. It's a monument to book-and-lyrics."

Jerry clamored to be shown a house that music had built. "It's you lyric writers who make the jack," he complained.

After they had called for Grace and delivered up Jamie in terror to his first social engagement—a children's party given by Mrs. Saling, young wife of the producer for whom Grace worked ("And what a soft thing she fell into," remarked Grace, as they left the place with its curving lawn decorated by gay colored balloons and the party dresses of children) they spent part of the afternoon looking at more houses. An airy, delicate, wistful little gray cottage "that nestled," Grace said; white frame buildings with green blinds; bright stucco bungalows; houses as precise as little jewels cut out of glowing brick, with tessellated walks surrounded by clipped verdure; romantic structures obscured by trees on hilltops—all these Grace liked. Blake wished to buy a lot and build so that his parents could live with or adjoining them, while Grace preferred a small, separate place which they could use for summers.

They passed by the dwelling of a famous writer, humped on a hill like a white elephant, which Anita had asked to see, and—just beyond—the convivial house of a famous editor, where women in all colors of silk sport dresses and men in shirt sleeves and men in tennis trousers were playing croquet on the lawn. "That crowd has a perfect passion for games," said Grace, peering from the car. She knew all the people and called off their names to Anita: the celebrities of a certain set in which she did not move though she had cast glances thereon.

Blake swerved the car and re-passed. "I suppose you want to get a glimpse of Raphael," he said to her teasingly, but with a hint of irritation. Grace did not answer. "Or should it be Rafe now?" persisted Blake. She smiled a secret, half-complacent smile and looked at Anita. She said they might as well stop by and visit Betty Rose Crawford who had the lead in We Are Three. "You might be interested in her," she told Blake and Jerry. "You know—Saling picked her from a chorus. This is only her second part. She sings and dances quite well."

"She wouldn't do for Boy Friends," said Blake. "No name."

"Well, it wouldn't hurt you—to just talk to her, would it? And you might happen to like her."

They found Betty Rose Crawford with her hair down her back, sitting under a striped awning on a sunny lawn. She was being entertained by the young actor whose house it was and whom she hastened to introduce with due decorum as her fiancé, managing also to inform them that her mother shared the house as chaperon. She was very pretty, brown-eyed, brown-haired. A faint simper lingered about her mouth as she talked in a sweet, high voice with the Anglo-American stage accent. She had the syrupy self-assurance of some stage children, and, sitting under the becoming colors of the awning, with her charming hair about her, sending her young man here and there for chairs and cocktails, chattering back-stage gossip, she put even Grace in the shade with her utter consciousness of herself as the center of attraction. She was the sort of girl who signifies her girlish purity and naïveté by telling, a little humorously, stories about children (little boys always) who lay flowers at her feet and old people (old men always) who worship her. After having interpolated into her talk suggestions of the many business offers she was always getting, she took them into the house and urged Jerry to play for her. He played some of the tunes for their new show, while she hummed them and laughingly took a few dance steps.

Jerry was ready to be smitten. On the way home he proclaimed that she was a sweet girl.

"She's pretty enough. But she wants too much money," said Blake thoughtfully. "We can get someone better known for that. Nancy Tuxson, for instance."

Grace remonstrated. "But she's so homely! For this show, it's my idea that a pretty girl who's not known is much better than a homely girl who is known."

Through dinner they debated the relative merits of Nancy Tuxson and Betty Rose Crawford and, upon withdrawal to the living room, they continued against a background of radio and Dad Andrews. Anita sat and waited. She had seized upon Jerry's announcement that he meant to borrow Blake's car and drive home that night with an eager explanation of how she had to rise so early to be on time for work that it would be much more convenient for her to accompany Jerry. Grace's objections had been overruled. There was now nothing to do but wait. Jerry took his place at the piano. Blake chanted the words of a lyric that he had lately finished while Jerry drummed the tune to go with it. Blake, Anita inferred, was uncertain of the song and wanted to know what the rest thought. She said it was very nice. Grace, however, had heard the words before. She undertook some helpful criticism. It was a good enough song but it didn't "hit" her; she couldn't "be crazy about it."

"It's not up to the standard of the funny songs you and Jerry have written," she said.

"It's not meant to be a funny song," replied Blake coldly. "It's an answer or theme song."

He and Jerry busied themselves over the piano, Jerry strumming while Blake changed a rhyme here and a sentence there. They went on to other tunes.

"We might as well go upstairs," said Grace. "We're not wanted here."

"You might as well," said Blake, still frozen. Jerry, from the piano, promised abstractedly to call Anita when he was ready. She had no choice but to follow Grace up to her room.

Grace settled herself on the linen cover of the bed in a field of green wool embroideries. Anita lingered by the door with an anxious ear cocked for the first long pause of the piano.

"They'll be hours yet," Grace assured her. "Move a chair over and shut the door, will you?"

Anita sighed within herself and moved over the armchair of maple and rested her elbows on its graceful arms. There was a silence. She could feel Grace's eyes fastening themselves in full somberness upon her. She stared at a rag rug of aquamarine and emerald and apple green and rose.

"What do you think of all this?" said Grace directly.

"Oh, it's all right." Anita, glancing up for a second, repented. There was that somber appeal in Grace's wide-open eyes which she never could withstand. It was as if Grace's topcoat of assurance were blown aside by a puff of wind and revealed her for that moment in all her nakedness—living tissue eaten alive by all the ants of care and worry; living tissue, shuddering, covered with the cold sweat of subterranean fears. "Well, you know, suburbs were never much in my line—a childhood inhibition, I guess," she said uneasily.

"Were they ever in mine?" demanded Grace. "It's like a judgment on me!" she exclaimed. "To get away from Ma and uptown domesticity only to fall into the clutches of Mother Andrews and—suburban domesticity. You know Blake's idea, don't you? He'd be—perfectly satisfied to live out here all the time with Mother and Dad and Jamie."

"Not that I'd mind bringing up Jamie," she went on, "or even living here so much—alone. But it's Mother Andrews who brings up Jamie, and you see how, don't you? The way she brought up Blake! Of course, Blake won't see and I can't—interfere. But I have to watch it. And Mother Andrews! She was crazy about Edith, you know. And she doesn't say a word, but every time she looks around the house I can feel her thinking—how much—Edith would have enjoyed all this."

She paused. Anita did not know what to say.

"And I thought Blake wanted to be free!" Grace concluded with a sardonic twist of her mouth.

After another pause she muttered, "I wouldn't mind being free myself—if you should want to know." She peered at Anita to see how startled she might be.

Anita was, in fact, a little surprised. "You don't mean a divorce, do you?"

Grace's eyes became huger than ever and took on the remote depths of tragedy. "I had—thought of that," she said slowly.

As Anita did not reply, she lowered her eyes, then refastened them to Anita's face. "I have—grounds, too," she stated. The effect of her words, the sudden lift of Anita's brows, was satisfactory. She added, "Oh, nothing I can actually point to! But—I have my suspicions. And I would have found out, too," she said with a reminiscent giggle. "I had almost got it out of Jerry one afternoon—you can get anything out of Jerry, you know—but Letty happened to be staying here and she came in and guessed what I was up to and jumped on me. She said I would resent Blake's cross-examining a friend of mine about my doings and so I had no right to ask Jerry about Blake's. I've never seen Letty so—boiling mad!"

"She was right, too," said Anita.

"I suppose." Grace shrugged. "I didn't mean to do anything about it. I just wanted to know. But I'm—practically sure anyhow."

"Well, it would be very funny for you to rave on the subject of marital infidelity," said Anita without further ado.

Grace was not abashed. "So Letty said. But I don't mean to rave. Only—one can get a divorce on that ground, can't one? It's something to know."

"And Blake has changed so," she continued more soberly. "Honestly, I don't mind this—not much. No, I don't," she repeated to Anita's slight glance of disbelief. "I get crushes too easily myself—not to—understand—infidelity, if it's only physical. You know I always did draw a distinction between physical and mental infidelity," she reminded Anita. "I don't—like the idea, but I can see how—some little chorus girl you don't give a snap for can get you physically. It didn't last long. Only I gave Blake credit for—for more fastidiousness. You remember the girl who rushed up to me Saturday—while we were waiting for Blake? That's the one. She's so—so coarse! And he's changed in other ways. He used to read a lot, you know, and talk about—things and now——"

"And he's getting fat," she sighed.

Anita thought that the piano had stopped below, but as soon as she half-rose she heard it again. The words that had been shaping themselves in her mind at last forced themselves impatiently past her tongue. "Oh, it's not really so bad," she said. "Aren't you rather dramatizing all this?"

There was a sudden movement of Grace's eyes; deliberate and velutinous, they stared into Anita's—simple, as simple as opalescent windows uncurtained to the world because they need no curtains to hide their interiors, presenting surfaces full of light and an embossed blankness behind which anything may be fancied and anything lurk. "I suppose so," said Grace, and smiled.

The eyes of the two girls met without passing each other, leaving them no wiser in words or in the mind, wiser only in inarticulate imagination. The moment fled and they could not recall just what it was they had tried to understand but they were pleased nevertheless. Some of the present constraint vanished and they talked for a while almost as they had in the old days when, just before going to bed of nights, they had undertaken to clarify to each other and to visualize each other's universes.

"Not that I don't admire your talent for self-dramatization," Anita said. "It's by making oneself all-important and the things one wants all-important, after all, that one gets them. That's where I miss out. I never could make any idea seem important enough to bother about much, or any person, not even myself. Whereas you exalted the idea of yourself and Blake together and made everything and everyone subsidiary to that idea and—you got what you wanted."

"Not quite," said Grace.

She added shrewdly, "You always did give me credit for too much calculation, you know. A lot of things were just—by-products, just happened. I had some good breaks. But you're right, in a way."

She thought for a while, moving restlessly. "Oh, I suppose I'll—settle down," she said, and shrugged. At the same time her eyes began a new plea to Anita.

"Sometimes," she said, "I think I might as well drop it all, be a dependent woman and cling and live in the suburbs and all that. It's so much easier. But when you've—not been dependent for a long time, it's hard to change. And then there's Ma. I have to take care of her."

She went on slowly, with her insistent eyes enlarging themselves on Anita's face. "I could have a baby. I'd even—thought of that! A baby might—solve everything. I'd sit around and be supported and keep house. In that way I'd get rid of Mother Andrews. And Ma would have to—manage. Blake would get used to the idea. As a matter of fact, I don't think he'd mind so much any more. He's made a good deal of money, you know—and he thinks he may get a movie contract—soon—which will mean more."

She paused expectantly. Anita was about to dismiss the subject with a prosaic, "Well, why don't you have a baby then?" but this sounded too brusque even to herself. She said instead, "Blake might not mind, but don't you think you might?"

"Oh—I don't know," said Grace. "I used to be so ambitious. But sometimes I think all I want—is to sink way down, to have an easy life, a soft life, money, clothes, good times, not be so—taut all the time with work and Blake and mother-in-law. I'd like to find some way of—abandoning myself!"

She said in a lower voice, while an expression faintly complacent, faintly defiant hovered about her mouth, and her eyes acted as a searchlight on Anita's face: "I've been—making a few experiments along those lines, if you should—care to know. I seem to be—more sensual—than I used to be."

Anita didn't care to know and hurried from the verge of further confidences. "Well, abandon is something one certainly can't plan anyhow. The minute you plan it, it isn't abandon."

There was another long silence. Grace sat there, her feet dangling, her hands in her lap. And at length the words which Anita had felt would be spoken some time that night emerged from her lips:

"All the same, I wish—Edith hadn't died."

They seemed to linger for an instant on the air.

"It was all so much better then," Grace said. "She would have got a divorce in time," she explained quickly. "She would have kept the child, you see, and I—wouldn't be in for all this mess of domesticity."

"'Ah! the good old days when I was so unhappy,'" quoted Anita. She rose and stretched. She was somewhat contrite to be so eager to go and, turning to Grace, she added, "But I don't think you and Blake will break up. I hope not. It would be such a pity."

"No," said Grace, "I don't think so either." She shook her head.

"I don't really believe I'll ever give Blake up," she admitted quietly.

And these, Anita thought, were the most sincere words that Grace had uttered. Less than most people would she be able to concede that any drama, in which she had fought and agonized and plotted to build up a principal part, could ever be trivial.

Something in her attitude, so still at the moment, summoned from the past a wraith that rose and fringed and shielded like smoke the familiar contours of her sweater dress; her clutching eyes; her long, pliant lips held together with just a trace of hauteur. Did she remember? Did she remember a girl with big eyes in a thin face, twisting a handkerchief tight enough to tear it, twisting and tearing with fingers like teeth, and another girl keeping quiet as a mouse from sympathy that was greater without words? Was she thinking perhaps that the misery of that moment had all been wasted? Or was the misery of that moment some subtle sustenance to her? Did it have its part in the veiling, aching glamour effused from old times, old feelings, thus softening now and then the troubled insistence of her eyes?

"You know," said Grace, "I really—believe—I wouldn't mind having a baby. It wouldn't interfere so much with my work. I needn't have a job. I could—write. And then it would be—an experience. What do you think?"

The air of the suburban night filled the interim with the nauseous singings of mosquitoes and the chitter of insects. Surely Jerry must be through! She must get home to-night! And the pressure of Anita's boredom and her distaste was so great that she had an instant when she could feel her nerves squeezed out of her and swimming before her eyes: infinitesimal iridescent worms swimming in liquid air before her.

THE END