Half-forgotten emotions of girlhood began to stir within her; she flushed, smiled, sighed at her own thoughts, she dreamed, and came bewildered out of her dreams, like a child.  What Clarence did, what Carol did, mattered no longer; she, Rachael, again had the centre of the stage.

Weeks flew by.  The question of summer plans arose:  the Villalongas wanted all the Breckenridges in their Canadian camp for as much as possible of July and August.  Clarence regarded the project with the embittered eye of utter boredom, Billy was far from enthusiastic, Rachael made no comment.  She stood, like a diver, ready for the chilling plunge from which she might never rise, yet, after which, there was one glorious chance:  she might find herself swimming strongly to freedom.  The sunny, safe meadows and the warm, blue sky were there in sight, there was only that dark and menacing stretch of waters to breast, that black, smothering descent to endure.

Now was the time.  The pretence that was her married life must end, she must be free.  In her thought she went no farther.  Rachael outwardly was no better than the other women of her world; inwardly there was in her nature an instinctive niceness, a hatred for what was coarse or base.  For years the bond between her and Clarence Breckenridge had been only an empty word.  But it was there, none the less, and before she could put any new plan into definite form, even in her own heart, it must be broken.

Many of the women she knew would not have been so fine.  For more than one of them no tie was sacred. and no principle as strong as their own desire for pleasure.  But she was different, as all the world should see.  No carefully chaperoned girl could be more carefully guarded than Rachael would be guarded by herself until that time—­the thought of it put her senses to utter rout—­until such time as she might put her hand boldly in Gregory’s, and take her place honorably by his side.

The taste of freedom already began to intoxicate her even while she still went about Clarence’s house, bore his moods in silence, and imparted to Billy that half-scornful, half-humorous advice that alone seemed to penetrate the younger woman’s shell of utter perversity.  Mrs. Breckenridge, as usual followed by admiring and envious and curious eyes, walked in a world of her own, entirely oblivious of the persons and events about her, wrapped in a breathless dream too exquisitely bright to be real.

It was a dream still so simple and vague that she was not conscious of wishing for Warren Gregory’s presence, or of being much happier when they were together than when she was deliciously alone with her thoughts of him.

About a month after the Whittaker tea Rachael found herself seated in the tile-floored tea-room at the country club with Florence.  There had been others in the group, theoretically for tea, but these were scattered now, and among the various bottles and glasses on the table there was no sign of a teacup.