A SELF-CONSCIOUS WOMAN

Two days later Beth answered a ’phone call from David Cairns....  He was just back from Nantucket ... for a few days....  Very grateful to find her in....  Yes, Vina had come over, too.

Beth was instantly animate.  Vina had planned to be gone a month at least.

“I’d like to come over alone first—­may I, Beth?” Cairns asked.

“Yes.”

“Within a half-hour?”

“Yes....  I shall prepare to listen to great happiness.”

...  Beth reflected that she looked a belated forty; that she had lost her charm for the eye of Jim Framtree, who had treated her like a relative.  She was ashamed to show her suffering to David Cairns—­ashamed that she cared—­but it was part of her.  Happiness was in the air.  She must listen.  She marveled at her capacity to endure....

The dews of joy were upon David Cairns.  Between Bedient and Vina, he had been born again.  He looked at her—­as all who knew her did now—­and then again in silence.  It always made her writhe—­that second stare.  It gave her the sense of some foreign evil in her body—­like the discovery of a malady with its threat of death in every vein.

He told her that Vina and he were to be married at once.  Beth gave to the story all that listening could add to the telling of happiness.

“And, David,” she said.  “I claim a little bit of credit for this glorious thing——­”

“Credit, Beth!” he said rousingly.  “I told Vina I could worship you for it!”

“Don’t, please—­David.  I don’t need it.  I’m too happy over you both....  And then, it wasn’t all mine, you know.  I think Mr. Bedient saw you together in his mind.  I think he meant me to startle you to your real empire——­”

“Did he?” Cairns asked eagerly.

“Hasn’t it turned out perfectly?”

Beth did not miss the gladness which this hint gave him.  She knew that Bedient’s thought of it would be like an authority to Vina as well....  She felt herself drawing farther and farther back from the lives of the elect, but joyously she urged David to tell about their house in Nantucket.

“And, Beth,” he said intensely.  “That was Bedient’s doing, too.  I have—­all I have seems to be the happiness part.”

“Poor dear boy—­how hard!”

“...I was telling him how Vina loved Nantucket,” Cairns went on, “some of the rare things she said about the Island and the houses in Lily Lane, and how I planned to go over and find her there this month.  He knew we were coming on very well....  One night at the Club, he asked me why I didn’t buy one of those houses in Lily Lane, fix up a studio in one of the upper rooms, and then show it to her some summer morning and let it seep in slowly that it was hers—­and my heart, too——­”

“Beautiful!” Beth exclaimed.  A trace of color came to her face.

“I’m telling it badly.  Vina will tell you better.  Anyway, he wouldn’t let me go over alone.  You remember when we went away together—­for three or four days early in June?”