“Doesn’t hurt to talk about her?”

“Lord, no! Because I wasn’t given fairy stories when I was little, I took them seriously when I was twenty-three.”

“Puppy love.”

“It went a little deeper than that.”

“But you don’t hate women?”

“No. I never hated the woman who deceived me. I was terribly sorry for her.”

“For having lost so nice a husband?”—with a bit of malice. 109

109

He greeted this with laughter.

“It is written,” she observed, “that we must play the fool sometime or other.”

“Have you ever played it?”

“Not yet, but you never can tell.”

“Jane, you’re a brick!”

“Jane!” she repeated. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your calling me that, with partitions in between.”

“They used to call me Denny.”

“And you want me to call you that?”

“Will you?”

“I’ll think it over—Denny!”

They laughed. Both recognized the basic fact in this running patter. Each was trying to buck up the other. Jane was honestly worried. She could not say what it was that worried her, but there was a strong leaven in her of old-wives’ prescience. It wasn’t due to this high-handed adventure of Cleigh, senior; it was something leaning down darkly from the future that worried her. That hand mirror!

“Better not talk any more,” she 

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