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 "And what is your plan?"

"Plan? I haven't any plan. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, yes you do, Henry! You always know. You may be a pig-headed sort of brute, but you're not an idiot. Is she to divorce McNair and marry Herbert? I hear he's always hanging around."

"Really, Bessie, you are impossible," he said irritably. "If McNair wants her, why doesn't he say so? She doesn't even hear from him. And as to Herbert—he's not around as much as you say. He's here, of course."

"So I understand," she retorted. "Under foot, coming back to be slapped, like a pup: What do you do with a pup like that? You stop slapping and begin to pet him. I know; I've been there. Send her back, Henry. Let him beat her, if he wants to. It isn't such a bad life, you know. Mother stood it pretty well, and—look at us!"

But she was not so certain after she had talked to Kay.

"What are you going to do with Herbert? Marry him?"

"I am married," said Kay flushing, "Herbert understands all that."

"Well, you are getting talked about all the same," Bessie retorted. "If you must have somebody hanging around, why always Herbert? Why not somebody else? The woods are full of them."

But Kay had no answer for that.

Bessie stayed for a week, while her town house was being opened, and left at the end of that time as unenlightened as she came. Kay, she saw, was still wearing her wedding ring. She had developed a curious habit of turning it around her finger, especially when Herbert was there. And Herbert, Henry notwithstanding, was there a great deal.

Bessie thought he had changed his attitude since the spring. He was more assured, faintly possessive.

"It's cool out here. Where's that cape of yours, Kay? I'll get it."

And if Kay was rather like a wooden image when he put it around her, Bessie knew that it was not the first, nor even the tenth time he had done so.