Rachael caught Mrs. Whittaker’s eye and shrugged her shoulders wearily.  She began slowly to mount the steps.

“It was nothing at all!” said the hostess cheerfully, adding immediately, “You poor thing!”

“All in the day’s work!” Rachael said, on a long sigh.  And turning to the man who stood silently in the doorway she asked, with all the confidence of a weary child, “Will you take me home, Greg?”

Her glance and the doctor’s met.  In the last soft, brilliant light of the afternoon long shadows fell from the great trees nearby.  Rachael’s green and white gown was dappled with blots of golden light, her troubled, glowing eyes were of an almost unearthly beauty, and her slender figure, against the background of colonial white paint and red brick, had all the tremulous, reedy grace of a young girl’s figure.  In the long look the two exchanged there was some new element born of this wonderful hour of spring, and of the woman’s need, and the man’s nearness.  Both knew it, although Rachael did not speak again, and, also in silence, the doctor nodded, and went past her down the steps for his car.

“Too bad!” Mrs. Whittaker said, coming back from a brief disappearance beyond the doorway.  “But such things will happen!  It’s too bad, Rachael, but what can one do?  Are you going to be warm enough?  Sure?  Don’t give it another thought, dear, nobody noticed it, anyway.  And listen—­any chance of a game tonight?  I could send over for you.  Marian’s with me, you know, and we could get Peter or Greg for a fourth.”

“No chance at all,” Rachael said bitterly.  She had always loved to play bridge with Greg; under the circumstances it would be a delicious experience.  She layed brilliantly, and Greg, when he was matched by partner and opponents, became absorbed in the game with absolutely fanatic fervor.  Rachael had a vision of her own white hand spreading out the cards, of the nod and glance that said clearly:  “Great bidding, Rachael; we’re as safe as a church!”

Clarence did not play bridge, he did not care for music, for books, for pictures.  He played poker, and sometimes tennis, and often golf; a selfish, solitary game of golf, in which he cared only for his own play and his own score, and paid no attention to anyone else.

Gregory’s great car came round the drive.  “Good-bye, Gertrude,” said Rachael with an unsmiling nod of farewell, and Mrs. Whittaker thought, as Elinor Vanderwall had thought the night before, that she had never seen Rachael look so serious before, and that things in the Breckenridge family must be coming rapidly to a crisis.