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"Sometimes I think I can't stand it, Fred. The eternal suspense, the
waiting for something to happen."
"If anything was going to happen it would have happened months ago.
Bassett has given it up. And Jud's dead. Even Wilkins knows that."
She turned on him angrily.
"You haven't a heart, have you? You're glad he's dead."
"Not at all. As long as he kept under cover he was all right. But if he
is, I don't see why you should fool yourself into thinking you're sorry.
It's the best solution to a number of things."
"What do you suppose brought Jean Melis here?"
"What? To see the best play in New York. Besides, why not allow the man
a healthy curiosity? He was pretty closely connected with a hectic part
of your life, my dear. Now buck up, and for the Lord's sake forget the
Frenchman. He's got nothing."
"He saw me that night, on the stairs. He never took his eyes off me at
the inquest."
She gave, however, an excellent performance that night, and nothing more
was heard of the valet.
There were other alarms, all of them without foundation. She went on her
way, rejected an offer or two of marriage, spent her mornings in bed and
her afternoons driving or in the hands of her hair-dresser and manicure,
cared for the flowers that came in long casket-like boxes, and began
to feel a sense of security again. She did not intend to marry, or to
become interested in any one man.
She had hardly given a thought to Leslie Ward. He had come and gone,
one of that steady procession of men, mostly married, who battered their
heads now and then like night beetles outside a window, against the hard
glass of her ambition. Because her business was to charm, she had been
charming to him. And could not always remember his name!
As the months went by she began to accept Fred's verdict that nothing
was going to happen. Bassett was back and at work. Either dead or a
fugitive somewhere was Judson Clark, but that thought she had to keep
out of her mind. Sometimes, as the play went on, and she was able to
make her solid investments out of it, she wondered if her ten years of
retirement had been all the price she was to pay for his ruin; but
she put that thought away too, although she never minimized her
responsibility when she faced it.
But her price had been heavy at that. She was childless and alone,
lavishing her aborted maternity on a brother who was living his
prosperous, cheerful and not too moral life at her expense. Fred was,
she knew, slightly drunk with success; he attended to his minimum of
labor with the least possible effort, had an expensive apartment on the
Drive, and neglected her except, when he needed money. She began to see,
as other women had seen before her, that her success had, by taking away
the necessity for initiative, been extremely bad for him.