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to him. There was still courtesy, taken back to what was for him its essence, the dread and certainty of being unwelcome, a bother, out of place. He had fallen back on estrangement, his oldest habit. As if he knew his unease made him seem aloof, he left the house in the morning and stayed away until evening, too late for supper but in time to spare his father his darkest fears. She left biscuits on the counter with the thought that he might pocket a few of them, and he did. She set out oatmeal cookies and hard-boiled eggs. She left coffee for him in a thermos bottle and a cup beside it, which he washed and put away. While he was gone she was very careful to see to everything he might have helped her with, so that he would not have to choose between the embarrassment of imposing on her and the forced familiarity of her company. And she prayed for him and prayed for him, she and her father, in long, silent graces that were grateful in anticipation of their relief at hearing him come through the door.

At supper the third night her father said, “I don’t know what it is, Glory. I don’t know what has happened.”

She said, “He is in love with a woman he knew in St. Louis.”

“Well, I figured out that much. All those letters.”

“Yes. The last week she’s been returning his letters.”

“Oh.” He took off his glasses and blotted his face with his napkin. After a moment he said gruffly, “I thought that might happen. Something like that. He doesn’t have a job. I don’t believe he ever graduated from college. He’s not a young man, not likely to change his life, and I don’t think it’s been a very good life. I can see why a woman might—” He cleared his throat. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“He’s known her for years. Those ten good years he talks about. He says she has helped him.”

Her father looked at her. “And they were never married at all?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her father looked somber. A failed lie meant his suspicions were correct, and she had probably never lied to him successfully. In fact, lying in that family almost always meant only that the liar would appreciate discretion. So the transparency of a falsehood was very much to the point. She had cordoned off her own embarrassments from inquiry by means of a few explanations that were false on their face and never tested or returned to for that reason. As a matter of courtesy they treated one another’s deceptions like truth, which was a different thing from deceiving or being deceived. In fact, it was a great part of the fabric of mutual understanding that made their family close.

She told some truth in this case because she was offended for Jack’s sake by the suggestion that he had simply thrown himself at a woman and been rejected, as if he were not ruefully aware as anyone could be of his utter ineligibility. It must have been this Della who kept him safe despite everything they feared, who may have kept him alive, and in any case who had made the world a tolerable place for him for a while, as they had somehow never managed to do. Jack had said that he worried about the casting of aspersions on Della and on their relationship, told her about trying to defend her honor, and Glory knew even as she did it that she should not have mentioned those ten years. Still, Jack should not be made to seem like a fool. And Della, whoever she was, had not reckoned his worth in terms of his prospects, for heaven’s sake. That much had to be said for her.

She knew she had made a grave mistake in giving her father’s anxieties some grounding in fact. She said, “The woman is a minister’s daughter.”

Her father nodded. “And Jack is a minister’s son.” Then he said, “There are no children involved.” This was a statement of the kind that meant he did not want his hope contradicted.

“No,” she said. From time to time she had wondered, too.

His face settled into that grave look it took on when he felt some sort of moral intervention was required of him. It was a sad, even a bitter look, because only the lack or failure of other approaches could induce him to fall back on this one, and because he knew it had never yielded any wholly good result. It might be that Jack had obligations he could not meet. If he did, then the family must act on behalf of those to whom he was obligated. Especially since they were no doubt also family. The old man would have to know what he was dealing with here, even though Jack was sure to be offended. His questions would inevitably sound like accusation. Such misery, just to learn what he did not want to know.

IF JACK HAD MARRIED THAT FRECKLED CHILD, OR AT LEAST if they had managed to bring her and her baby into their household, then he could have gone back to college and the girl could have finished school and gone to college herself, if she wanted to. “She seems bright enough,” Glory’s mother had said. That was her interpretation of the precocious, intractable hostility toward the Boughtons that would not be moved or swayed by any kindness they could contrive. She was a hard, proud, unsmiling girl, and she may well have hated them all for their benevolent intentions, which were indeed condescending, reflecting as they did their awareness that her circumstances could be improved, that