besides this Ethel is her sister-in-law and I don't guess Rosemary likes squabbling with the relatives. Some people thrive on that. Hey? Some people make a career out of it.' 'I see. I see,' said Mrs. Boatright, stopping his flow. 'Had you seen much of this sister-in-law before?' 'Never,' wailed Rosemary.
'Let her cry,' said Virginia. 'Cry hard, Rosemary.' Paul squirmed. 'Look . . . she can't take much more of this . . .'
'It's high time she bawled her head off,' the nurse said fiercely. 'And Mr. Gibson, too.'
But Mr. Gibson sat, dry-eyed and amazed.
'I'm sorry . . .' sobbed Rosemary. 'It isn't really Ethel, herself. I know that. But it's her ideas. It's the way she thinks. And what can you do? I know I'm a rabbit but, even if you aren't a rabbit, how can you fight that kind of thing? I've told myself . . . I've told her ... I couldn't have meant it. But the idea is, I wouldn't know if I had! I'd be the last to know! And how can you argue with somebody who just turns everything you say around? Who just makes you feel as if every time you opened your mouth you were giving some horrible inner beastly self away? If you insist, she thinks Aha, you protest too much! So you must really mean the exact opposite. If you talk loud, because you feel so strongly that you're right . . . why, a loud voice means you must be trying to sell yourself a lie. It's maddening,' said Rosemary. 'You can't know anything. You can't trust yourself, at all.'
Doomed, said Mr. Gibson in his throat or his mind. Nobody seemed to hear him.
'What I'd like to know,' said Lee Coffey angrily, 'is who gives this Ethel her license to read minds. Hey? Fd give Rosemary a fifty-fifty chance to know, as well as Ethel, what Rosemary means by what she says.'
'No, you can't,' wept Rosemary. 'You're the last. That's the paralyzing thing!'
The nurse said some angry syllable under her breath. The driver's head agreed savagely.
'Gratitude,' said Mrs. Boatright, rhythmically stroking Rosemary's hair with one plump jeweled hand, 'lasts on, for a time, after the deed that caused it. But it's like a fire, don't you think so? It's lit, it bums, it's warm. But it nepds fuel. It doesn't last forever unless it's fed.'
Mrs. Boatright was making a speech. She had a clear voice and she knew how to breathe and she could be rather eloquent. Even Rosemary -stopped her weeping noises to listen.
'No one should be the prisoner of stale gratitude—to change and also mix the metaphor' declaimed Mrs. Boat- : right. 'I think of the children in this world, enslaved by parents trading on gratitude for old deeds that should have been done for love only in the first place. I think of parents who have become, in fact, whining nuisances thatJ flesh-and-blood rightfully resents and yet blood, that is thicker than water, scourges itself for resenting. I shudder
at SO much unhappiness. Gratitude can be a dreadful thing when it becomes a debt—you see?—and there is guilt and reluctance. But if, by continued feeding, faith is created, and mutual respect is accumulated and confidence grows, in love, in friendship, then gratitude turns into something better. And something durable.' She paused and one expected the pattering of ladies' hands over the luncheon tables. Here was only the rushing sound of the car, and Rosemary saying, 'I know ...' in a choking voice.
'If parents, for instance,' said Mrs. Boatright, wistfully, in a more private kind of voice, 'could only grow up to be their children's friends . . . Have you children, my dear?'
Paul said hastily, almost in alarm. 'They've only been married . . . less than three months . . .'
There was a silence, deep . . . except for the sounds of the car's progress.
Lee Coffey said in a moment, 'Is that so? I didn't know that.'
'A bride and a groom,' said Virginia slowly, her voice caressing the words sadly.
The news was sinking into the fabric of all their speculations, dyeing everything to different colors. Mr. Gibson felt like crying out. No, you don't understand. It was only a silly, unrealistic arrangement. And I am fifty-five. She is thirty-two. It leaves twenty-three.
He cried out nothing.
Mrs. Boatright turned and said to him, 'Rosemary finds your sister difficult. Rosemary has been unhappy. But Rosemary wasn't the one who stole the poison, was she?'
'No,' he said. 'No.'
'Then what was the matter with you?' she asked.
He couldn't answer.
Paul turned around. 'You certainly raised the devil,' he said. 'You might have been a little bit thoughtful of Rosie at least. And Ethel. And mey for that matter. If you'd thought of others and not yourself . . .'
'He does think of others,' said Rosemary faintly.
'Not today, he didn't,' said Paul, 'and what he did was a sin.' He jerked his head to look forward. The back of his neck was righteous and furious.
' 'Oh . . . that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter . . .' ' crooned the bus driver. 'That's what you mean, hey?'
'You know what I mean.'
'Yes, but that's our culture,' said the bus driver. 'You take Japan ...'
'You take Japan,' said Paul, sulkily.
Mrs. Boatright, who had a way of going back and clearing up one thing at a time, said, 'I serve with the Red Cross, the Board of Education, the Society for the Encouragement of the U.N., the Council for Juvenile Welfare, the American Women for Political Housecleaning, and the church, of course, and I work in these groups. But noj for 'others.' Isn't this my world? And while I am here, my business?' She conquered her oratorical impulses. 'There is a weakness about that word 'others,' ' she said privately, 'and I never have liked it.'
'It's not definitive,' snapped Virginia, 'Show me one patient. An other.'
