Carol laughed.  He looked at her in a puzzled way and fled to his newspaper.

IV

She lay sleepless.  She alternately considered ways of leaving Kennicott, and remembered his virtues, pitied his bewilderment in face of the subtle corroding sicknesses which he could not dose nor cut out.  Didn’t he perhaps need her more than did the book-solaced Erik?  Suppose Will were to die, suddenly.  Suppose she never again saw him at breakfast, silent but amiable, listening to her chatter.  Suppose he never again played elephant for Hugh.  Suppose——­A country call, a slippery road, his motor skidding, the edge of the road crumbling, the car turning turtle, Will pinned beneath, suffering, brought home maimed, looking at her with spaniel eyes—­or waiting for her, calling for her, while she was in Chicago, knowing nothing of it.  Suppose he were sued by some vicious shrieking woman for malpractice.  He tried to get witnesses; Westlake spread lies; his friends doubted him; his self-confidence was so broken that it was horrible to see the indecision of the decisive man; he was convicted, handcuffed, taken on a train——­

She ran to his room.  At her nervous push the door swung sharply in, struck a chair.  He awoke, gasped, then in a steady voice:  “What is it, dear?  Anything wrong?” She darted to him, fumbled for the familiar harsh bristly cheek.  How well she knew it, every seam, and hardness of bone, and roll of fat!  Yet when he sighed, “This is a nice visit,” and dropped his hand on her thin-covered shoulder, she said, too cheerily, “I thought I heard you moaning.  So silly of me.  Good night, dear.”

V

She did not see Erik for a fortnight, save once at church and once when she went to the tailor shop to talk over the plans, contingencies, and strategy of Kennicott’s annual campaign for getting a new suit.  Nat Hicks was there, and he was not so deferential as he had been.  With unnecessary jauntiness he chuckled, “Some nice flannels, them samples, heh?” Needlessly he touched her arm to call attention to the fashion-plates, and humorously he glanced from her to Erik.  At home she wondered if the little beast might not be suggesting himself as a rival to Erik, but that abysmal bedragglement she would not consider.

She saw Juanita Haydock slowly walking past the house—­as Mrs. Westlake had once walked past.

She met Mrs. Westlake in Uncle Whittier’s store, and before that alert stare forgot her determination to be rude, and was shakily cordial.

She was sure that all the men on the street, even Guy Pollock and Sam Clark, leered at her in an interested hopeful way, as though she were a notorious divorcee.  She felt as insecure as a shadowed criminal.  She wished to see Erik, and wished that she had never seen him.  She fancied that Kennicott was the only person in town who did not know all—­know incomparably more than there was to know—­about herself and Erik.  She crouched in her chair as she imagined men talking of her, thick-voiced, obscene, in barber shops and the tobacco-stinking pool parlor.