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Updated: June 22, 2025
She eyed Martie's fresh beauty appraisingly, immediately suspected her condition, was given the young wife's unreserved confidence, and, with a few brief pieces of advice, left her new boarders entirely to their own devices. Wallace's daring compliments fell upon unhearing ears; she would not lower her prices for anybody, she said.
But Martie's tone was so heavy, and the fashion in which she raised a hand to brush the hair from her white forehead was so suggestive of pain, that Sally felt a little tremor of apprehension. "Martie you don't CARE, too?" she asked fearfully. "With every fibre of my soul and body!" Martie answered, in a low, moody voice from the doorway.
A girl was admired, was desired, and was married, if she was, humanly speaking, a success. If she was not admired, if no one asked her in marriage, she was a failure. This was the only test. Martie's thoughts never went on to the years that followed marriage, the experiences and lessons; these were all lost in the golden glow that surrounded the step safely accomplished.
The light in Martie's room was turned up, and fell in a yellow oblong across the gravel; Lydia dozed and awakened, but the light was always there. Morning broke softly in a fog which did not lift as the hours went by. Malcolm was at home until after lunch, to which meal Teddy and Martie came downstairs unusually well dressed, Martie observing that she had errands down town.
To-morrow she must end this dream of exquisite fulfillment, to-morrow, somehow, she must send John away. But to-night was theirs. Their talk was that of lovers, whose only life is in each other's presence. They leaned on an old fence, above the town, and whether they were grave, or whether Martie's gay laugh and his eager echoing laugh rang out, the enchantment held them alike.
Martie said, suddenly serious. "I'm going to take my coffee black, anyway. I'm getting too fat!" "Oh, Martie, you are not!" Sally laughed. "That's foolish you'll just upset your health!" her mother added disapprovingly. Martie's only answer was a buoyant kiss. She and Sally carried their breakfast into the dining room, where they established themselves comfortably at one end of the long table.
They noticed Martie's shoe-lacings and the frill of muddy petticoat, the ungloved hands and the absurdity of her having removed her hat, and told Rodney about these things later. At the time they only made her uncomfortable in quiet little feminine ways; not hearing her when she spoke, asking her questions whose answers must surely embarrass her. Tea came in.
For a few days she laboured tirelessly with it: then she tired of it, and flung it aside. Other things absorbed her attention. First came the expected letter from Wallace. Martie's hand shook as she took it from the postman. Now she would know now she would know! Whatever the news, the suspense was over.
In the basements were smaller stores where ice and coal and firewood and window-glass and tinware might be had, and along the street supplementary carts of fruit and vegetables were usually aligned, so that, especially to inexperienced eyes like Martie's, the whole presented a delightfully distracting scene. She accepted the fact that Wallace must come and go as best suited his engagements.
And suddenly it seemed to Sally that restless, lovely Martie did not really belong to Monroe, that this mysterious sister of hers never had belonged to Monroe, that Martie's well-groomed hair and hands were as little in place here as Martie's curious aloofness from the town affairs, as Martie's blue eyes through which her hungry soul occasionally looked.
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