from a mere woman who—who after all is only the wife of your friend.”
They were sitting on a bench under a red-flowering poinsettia whose huge scarlet petal-leaves spread out like sharp plumes.
“The wife of my friend!” he said. “What could you be better?”
“Of course,” she said, more than equivocal.
He was leaning his arms on his knees, and looking out to the lake, abstract, and remote. There was a certain worn look on his face, and the vulnerability which always caught at Kate’s heart. She realized again the isolation and the deadly strain his effort towards a new way of life put upon him. Yet he had to do it.
This again gave her a feeling of helplessness, a woman’s utter helplessness with a man who goes out to the