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THE WINTER wore on, and society took advantage of the Waythorns' acceptance of Varick. Harassed hostesses were grateful to them for bridging over a social difficulty, and Mrs. Waythorn was held up as a miracle of good taste. Some experimental spirits could not resist the diversion of throwing Varick and his former wife together, and there were those who thought he found a zest in the propinquity.
At dinner Waythorn told her of Sellers's illness and of the resulting complications. She listened sympathetically, adjuring him not to let himself be overworked, and asking vague feminine questions about the routine of the office. Then she gave him the chronicle of Lily's day; quoted the nurse and doctor, and told him who had called to inquire. He had never seen her more serene and unruffled.
The spring evening was chilly, and Waythorn invited his guest to draw up his chair to the fire. He meant to find an excuse to leave Haskett in a moment; but he was tired and cold, and after all the little man no longer jarred on him. The two were inclosed in the intimacy of their blended cigar-smoke when the door opened and Varick walked into the room. Waythorn rose abruptly.
Waythorn was exasperated by his own paltriness, but the fact of the tie expanded, forced itself on him, became as it were the key to Alice's past. He could see her, as Mrs. Haskett, sitting in a "front parlor" furnished in plush, with a pianola, and a copy of "Ben Hur" on the centre-table.
Haskett returned the bow in silence, and Waythorn was still groping for speech when the footman came in carrying a tea-table. The intrusion offered a welcome vent to Waythorn's nerves. "What the deuce are you bringing this here for?" he said sharply. "I beg your pardon, sir, but the plumbers are still in the drawing-room, and Mrs. Waythorn said she would have tea in the library."
A man would rather think that his wife has been brutalized by her first husband than that the process has been reversed. "Why, how do you do?" she said with a distinct note of pleasure "MR. WAYTHORN, I don't like that French governess of Lily's." Haskett, subdued and apologetic, stood before Waythorn in the library, revolving his shabby hat in his hand.
Her lip was beginning to tremble, and he felt himself a brute. "He must come, of course," he said. "When is his day?" "I'm afraid to-morrow." "Very well. Send a note in the morning." The butler entered to announce dinner. Waythorn turned to his wife. "Come you must be tired. It's beastly, but try to forget about it," he said, drawing her hand through his arm. "You're so good, dear.
"Oh, how stupid of me," she cried. Their eyes met, and she blushed a sudden agonized red. TEN DAYS later, Mr. Sellers, still house-bound, asked Waythorn to call on his way down town. The senior partner, with his swaddled foot propped up by the fire, greeted his associate with an air of embarrassment. "I'm sorry, my dear fellow; I've got to ask you to do an awkward thing for me."
It occurred to him that Varick might be talking at random, to relieve the strain of their propinquity. That strain was becoming momentarily more apparent to Waythorn, and when, at Cortlandt Street, he caught sight of an acquaintance, and had a sudden vision of the picture he and Varick must present to an initiated eye, he jumped up with a muttered excuse.
The following week Waythorn was again conscious of the recurrence of the day, but had forgotten it by the time he came home to dinner. The crisis of the disease came a few days later, with a rapid decline of fever, and the little girl was pronounced out of danger.
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