“What—what does Jack think?” asked Jane slowly.
“I don’t know what he thinks,” said Isabel. “He’d be the last, of course, to criticize Cicily. He acts—he acts exactly as if it weren’t happening.” Her voice was trembling a little. “I wouldn’t speak to him about it for worlds.”
“Of course not,” said Jane quickly. “It—it’s not a thing to talk about. But I know you’re exaggerating it, Isabel. You know Cicily—”
“Yes, I know Cicily,” put in Isabel ironically.
“She’s pretty and gay and only twenty-eight. She’s been married nine years and she never really had her fling. I—I suppose Albert turned her head. I think it’s outrageous of him to take advantage of her—”
“Take advantage of her!” cried Isabel.
“Take advantage of her inexperience—”
“Jane! You know as well as I do that such affairs are always the woman’s fault! The idea of Cicily, the mother of three children—”
“It’s just a harmless flirtation!” cried Jane. She was conscious of blind prejudice as she spoke. She knew nothing about it.
“It’s not a very pretty flirtation,” said Isabel.
“I agree with you,” said Jane soberly.
“And it’s made a different woman of Cicily. Surely, Jane, you saw—”
“I saw she looked very happy,” said Jane.
“A woman’s always happy,” said Isabel, “when she’s falling in love.”
“She’s not falling in love,” said Jane decidedly. She saw it all clearly now, in a flash of revelation. “She’s just falling for Albert. She’s falling for excitement and admiration and fun. She’ll snap out of it, Isabel.”
“Will you speak to her?” asked Isabel.
“I—don’t—know,” said Jane slowly. “I don’t know if it would do any good. Don’t you remember how you felt yourself, Isabel, about—about parents—speaking? It only irritated you.”
“I certainly don’t!” cried Isabel sharply. “There was never any occasion for parents to speak about a thing like that to me. Or to you, either, Jane.”
Jane sat a moment in silence, staring across the deep blue water at the glowing embers in the Western sky.
“I can remember—I can remember,” she said slowly, “how I felt about parents—mixing in and—and spoiling things that were really lovely—”
“What things?” pursued Isabel hotly. “You never had a beau in your life, Jane, after you married Stephen—unless you count little Jimmy Trent! But this—this is serious.”
“Perhaps,” said Jane. “I’ll think it over. But somehow I don’t believe much in parental influence. It’s something inside yourself that makes you behave, you know. Matthew Arnold knew—‘the enduring power not ourselves which makes for righteousness.’ I don’t believe that Cicily would ever really be unkind—would ever knowingly hurt others.”
“But she is hurting them!” cried Isabel. “She’s hurting Belle, this minute!”
“Well, she’ll stop,” said Jane stoutly. “She’ll stop when she realizes.”
Isabel opened the door of the motor.
“I’m going to walk home,” she said. She stood a moment hesitatingly by the side of the car. “It—it upsets me so to talk about it, Jane.” Her lips were trembling again. “I’m going to walk home and—and think of something else. I don’t want to worry Robin. We’ve never talked about it. I suppose that seems funny to you, Jane, but—” She broke off a little helplessly.
“No. No, it doesn’t,” said Jane. “I’m glad you haven’t. I never worry Stephen. So many things blow over, you know, and if you haven’t said anything—”
“Exactly,” said Isabel.
Jane stared a moment in silence, down into her troubled eyes.
“Children can just wreck you,” said Isabel.
Jane nodded.
“Give my love to Robin,” she said. She set the gears in motion and moved slowly off down the boulevard. “Little Jimmy Trent,” she was thinking. So that was all that Isabel had ever realized. She felt a sudden flood of sympathy for Cicily. Cicily, intoxicated with the wine of admiration. Cicily succumbing to the transcendent temptation to quicken a passion, to love and be loved. It was all very wrong, however. And very dangerous. Such temptations must be overcome. The wine of admiration could be forsworn. Cicily would, of course, forswear it. She could not speak to her. But she could watch. She could worry. That was what parents were for.
III
It was one o’clock on a late November morning and the first Assembly ball was in full swing in the ballroom of the Blackstone Hotel. The room was brilliantly lighted. Its gilded walls were hung with smilax and banked with palms and chrysanthemums. The floor was filled with dancers. A few elderly ladies, in full evening dress, were clustered in little groups on a row of gilt chairs, under the palms. A great crowd of young men were massed near the door. From that crowd, black broadcloth figures continually detached themselves, dashed into the revolving throng, tapped young women cavalierly on naked shoulders, drew them from their partners’ embrace and stalked solemnly off with them.
Modern dances always seemed stalking and solemn to Jane. She was sitting in the balcony that ran round the room, her arms on the smilax-hung railing gazing down at the kaleidoscope of light and movement and colour on the floor. She was wearing a new black velvet evening gown—everyone wore a new gown to the first Assembly—and she was vaguely wondering if the cane seat of her gilt chair was creasing the skirt. The balcony was crowded with other middle-aged women in other new evening gowns, sparsely attended by a sprinkling of middle-aged men.
Twenty feet away down the line of spectators sat Isabel, with Stephen, resigned and somnolent, standing behind her chair. Robin sat at Jane’s elbow. Jane knew everyone present and was tired of seeing them. She had seen them at an endless succession of first Assembly balls. Tonight they looked just as they always had. At the other
