When the long, dreary, slushy days of winter had given way to the invigorating and friendly warmth of an early spring, she spent most of her days sitting in the park. Used to the tropical heat of New Orleans, the biting winds and driving snows of the North made her miserable and depressed, though her years in Atlanta had inured her to a degree against the cold. But she did not like cold weather, and the coming of the days when she could see the delicate green of the sprouting grass and budding trees made her very happy.
She would take with her to the park a book or more often a newspaper but she seldom read. She was content to sit and watch children at play or gaze at friendly squirrels who so ludicrously sat rapidly revolving a nut disentombed from earthy caches in their little forepaws as they bit into its hard shell.
Even the sinking of a huge vessel like the Titanic after collision with an iceberg off the Canadian coast with great loss of life could not stir her. Nor could the hectic days of an election year stir her from her apathy. A former schoolteacher from New Jersey, a prominent member of Congress, a twice-defeated candidate for the Presidency, a fat, jovial and weak President, and a vigorous ex-President were scrambling madly for nominations, but so far as Mimi was concerned, they might just as well have been struggling for the rulership of an obscure island in the South Seas.
As the time of her ordeal approached she achieved a calmness of which she had never believed herself capable. Her hatred, her contempt for Carl had passed and in its stead had come a complete lack of feeling towards him. She saw him now in perspective more and more clearly as the weak individual he had proved himself to be. She wondered why she had not seen it sooner, why traits of his which now were revealed all too clearly had been invisible to her. His indecisiveness, his succumbing to indifference and easy vices when they had first parted on Hilda’s account,