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Updated: June 2, 2025
When he had gone Charity got up and washed her hands, particularly the hand, particularly the spot, he had kissed. She seemed to feel that some of the rouge from Zada's lips had been left there by Cheever's lips. There was a red stain there and she could not wash it away. Perhaps it was there because she tried so hard to rub it off.
He stared at Zada, and his anger ran out of his face just as the water ran out of the silver washbowl in the sleeping-car. Then he began to laugh softly, but as if he wanted to laugh right out loud. He put his napkin up and laughed into that. And then the anger he had lost ran up into Zada's face, and she looked at Peter as if she wanted to kill him.
He longed to go to Zada and help her and let her revile him and scratch him, perhaps, provided only that she would throw her arms about him afterward. He never imagined that a duel of self-control, a mortal combat in refinement, was being fought over him by those two women. Zada's strength gave out long before Charity's; she was newer to the game.
The thought of what the neighbors were about to hear made him sick with chagrin. The fact that the neighbors were under suspicion themselves only aggravated the burden of shame. The hardest part of Zada's agony was her pitiful effort to take her medicine like a lady. It was terrific how hard it was for one of a wildcat heritage and habit to keep the caterwaul back and the claws muffled.
He consented to Zada's plan and promised to call up his wife. Zada took a brief triumph from that. But Peter was ashamed and afraid to speak to Charity even across the wire. He knew that it has become as difficult to lie by telephone as face to face. The treacherous little quavers in the voice are multiplied to a rattle, and nothing can ever quite imitate sincerity.
She would certainly not live with him another day. That would be to make herself an accomplice, a silent partner of Zada's. It would be intolerable, immoral, not nice. The next morning proved to be a Sunday and she felt a need of spiritual help in her hour of affliction. Man had betrayed her; religion would sustain her grim determination to end the unwholesome condition of her household.
Cheever caught her eye and halted, petrified, long enough for Charity to sit down, look up at him, follow the line of his gaze, and catch a full blast of Zada's beauty and of the fierce look she fastened on Cheever. Charity's eyes ran back on the almost visible clothes-line of that taut gaze and found Cheever wilting with several kinds of shame.
She canceled her business with her detective agency. And they called in the shadows that haunted Charity's life. The detectives on Zada's trail, however, had more rewarding material to work with although they found unexpected difficulties, they said, in getting the dictagraph installed in her apartment.
Or since you know him so well, tell me where he'll be, and I'll go find him." He could hear Zada's strangled moan. How many times, since male and female began, have women made wild, vain protests against the battle-habit, the duel-tribunal?
"Yassar," was the soft answer. There was the sound of shuffling feet and a softly closed door. Then Zada's voice, very mellow: "I thought you'd never come, dearie." "Awfully busy to-day, honey." "You took dinner with her, of course." "No.
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