Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/101

 She wandered out, humming, and up the staircase, but in her own room, the door safely closed, she put down her cigarette holder and the hat she still carried, and stood thinking. Nothing had been lost on her downstairs, neither Kay's pallor nor the faint color which had followed her question. And the faint tightening of her sister-in-law's lips was a signal with which she was entirely familiar.

"They've been deviling her about something, or somebody," she considered. "The life's gone out of her. If it's that stick of a secretary!" She considered that, discarded it. More likely it was somebody out West. "Somebody real and of course ineligible. They'd hate that like poison."

She slept until time to dress for dinner, and then swaggered downstairs in a dress with practically no back in it. But although she kept her eyes and her mind alert she got no clue that evening. Kay ate very little; Katherine talked politely, and Henry gave assiduous and critical attention to his food. She herself smoked after every course, and through the smoke haze that surrounded her watched them all in turn with bright and comprehending eyes.

Something was certainly wrong among them.

However, it was not until the third day of her stay that she learned anything, and then it required all of her philosophy to meet the situation.

In her casual way she drifted about the house. No door was safe against her unless it was locked; she had no reserves and very little sense of privacy. Indeed, once long ago her sister-in-law had been taken up to her dressing room, to find Bessie in a very sketchy negligée having her hair waved, and a young minor poet reading to her from a manuscript in his hand.

Mrs. Dowling had apologized and tried to back out again, but Bessie had seen her and called to her.

"Come in," she said. "Don't you want a wave while Pierre is here? He's about finished with me. Don't mind Jimmy here. Most of his poems are about ladies who don't wear anything at all."

Katherine had never told Henry that.