The Preliminaries, and Other Stories

the great waves of her emotion had pounded and beaten me. I shared, and yet shrank from, her passiona

on. Certainly I shrank from the notoriety that would attach itself to us when young Mrs. Arnold Ackroyd took up her residence in Reno, as a first step toward the wider life. {82} Then there was the disruption of old ties of

sister Mary, Mrs. Green

ted for each other the middle name we all bore, Mary calling me Stub, and I calling her Stubby. We

ing is comely. There is at the bottom {83} of her nature an indomitable

has Lucreti

Lucretia has been here. Very

perhaps a thought too plump. She threw back her sable stole and unfastened her braided violet coat; sh

oo warm in here," s

e a g

ttle to one side,

8

y to the confection of fur, ye

said plaintively. "It can't be my fault that they sl

ut Desire. Mary, how long have you

s talked to me more than to her mother. You know, Ben, one would

little austere, but it seems to me that austerity has its {85} advantages. For instan

ng about it. At first it seemed to me I simply could not have it, and I thought I was going to influence Desire. But nobody ever influences people in matt

game of hearts ends in the courts, breaking up a home and smashing the lives concerned to {86} flinders, do you really think

mptly; "though," she added reflectively, "judge

ted a litt

pirit, and her aesthetic instincts. And when one gets up in that corner of one's nature, people like you or me or Desire are so used to regarding all the demands emanating from there as legitimate, as something to be {87} proud of, to be satisfied at almost any

s, Mary? I thought there was so much of i

May, I believe I will have a green cloth, embroidered, for a fall suit, about the first of November, you {88} might expect Arnold to remark, I don't see that green cloth suit you said you were going to have. What made you change your mind?

pected the other one to be born again, and born different by virtue of mutual affection and requirements. Arnold will go on wondering to the end of his l

did the

rong tie. He was a man used to getting what he wanted, and when he became bewitched--can't you see how it would all work together? I know Lucretia thinks there is no excuse for Desire. But I see this excuse for her. None of us ever trained her to know she could n't have everything she wanted. Of course, we never {90} expected her to want anything but the finest, the highest. But she is human, a

beginning to rest and appease me, and I was a little less con

ngenial. Very properly he is keeping himself at long distance and entirely out of it. No one but ourselves surmises tha

at Lucretia sai

ook he

" I quoted. "I shall never forget

n the wrong direction, but if we don't mov

yourself a willingness to have an unjustified divorce and a huge,

Lucretia. And I am--only--well, I want to help Desire, and I can't help her if I let myself feel like that. I suppose you'll think I'm an unmoral old thing, but I see it this way: if these affairs are going to happen in one's very own family, one might as well put them th

as big as a pin-head about you, and I don't appr

he came back and, dropping awkwardly beside my chair, buried her convulsed and quivering fac

'whom God hath joined'--I--I tried to appeal to her common sense. Irreligious people often do have a great dea