Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1940-08-18


remembering that in seven hours and thirty
five minutes she must knock off Horace's halo.
You mean you - you want to leave me-"
he said ponderously. He was not bewildered.
His tone was judicial, as if he wanted to get
all the facts before he handed down an
opinion.
He had neither cursed nor groaned nor
taken her roughly in his arms nor done any
of the things that less worthy men might
have done under the circumstances. He sat
quietly IN his armchair beside the lamp, the
evening paper on his lap.
YES" said Gertrude. She sat across the
room in one corner of the buff colored couch.
her knees pressed close together. one knee
giving strength to the other.
And your idea is that we are in such an
awful nut already there is no extricating our
selves" he went on, except by your prying
yourself out?"
YES" said Gertrude mockingly.
you think we are Flooding along together
as if we had been married fifty years and not
really y not really Hving9 Horace reopened
the paper. This was the hour of the day when
he always read the paper.
Gertrude, he said, Il think you are abso-
lutely right"
The next morning everything seemed the
same as ever. There was no indication that
there had been convulsion in that house.
Gertrude had expected to project the convul-
sion by announcing her departure, but Horace
had overtrumped her. His agreeing 80 unemo-
tionally to her departure was really cata-
clysmic. She felt exactly like someone who
bids four spades against spineless opponent
who meekly bids little slam in spades.
Horace ate his pre-buttered toast in silence
and left with his hat on the exact top of his
head
Instead of defying the house that morning,
Gertrude felt premature nostalgia for it,
as if it already did not belong to her any
more. She polished the silver with an old
fiannelette pajama leg and then went in town,
where she bought an Empire peach-colored
nightgown. short haircut - curls all over
her head - and a lobster for Horace's dinner.
x1E DID not appear to eat it, and she did not
know where he was For the first time in their.
married life she did not know what he was
doing 1t occurred to her that he might have
felt what she had said to him the night before
too deeply for words and had quietly decided
to efface himself, wounded to the death. by
committing suicide. This at the same moment
caused her scalp to crawl and her heart to
warm The telephone rang and she swooped
toward it in one swoop, fearfully anticipating
call from either the police or hospital.
Telegram for Mrs. Horace Latimer,"
said laconic voice. Spending night in town.
Stop. Tried to phone you. Signed, Horace"
She climbed shakily upstairs feeling. of all
strange reactions, a singing hatred of Suzanne
Blaine.
The next afternoon Horace's stenographer
telephoned that he would not be home for
dinner. What, not on Wednesday?" Gertrude
said before she remembered that everything
was different now. He had always come home
for vestry meeting on Wednesday,
She did not know whether to open Horace's
bed or not he might not come home at all.
He liked the sheet turned back over the
blanket, his f1annelette pajamas laid out and
the puff spread over the footboard. He slept
in the guest room if they had no guests. be-
cause he liked to turn his light out on the
stroke of ten, unless he were at a meeting or
playing bridge and he did not want to cut
Gertrude off in the middle of reading a mapa.