Coincidentally, the time of her seclusion is just the amount Edwin needs to complete a course of medication for venereal disease.

—

Not everyone is pleased with the engagement. Adam Badeau is extravagantly miserable. “I have seen for some time growing evidence enough not only of her importance, but also of my own eclipse. I wish to God I’d never seen you. It’s a frightful thing to live out of one’s self; to be buried alive in somebody else.”

And from Asia: “I’d like to write a letter on her face with this pen . . .”

Asia

xv

No one is doing anything Asia wants them to do. Jean’s last letter hints at an infatuation with a wild Australian. Asia writes back immediately: “No! John has his eye on you, so I understand,” and even as she writes it, she knows it’s not true. John has his eye on a diminutive elf of an actress down in Richmond. Asia seems to be the only one who remembers that he once kissed Jean.

She and Sleeper have a nice, clean house on Franklin Street near the square, with a large room for Rosalie and Mother, and Rosalie is acting as if it’s some sort of prison, skulking about at all hours, looking for the way out.

Worst of all is Edwin. He’s to marry Mary Devlin in a year’s time. Asia forgives him his drinking, as it’s a hereditary condition and his only failing.

But she cannot forgive this misbegotten romance. Mary has already asked to borrow money—it is all money with her, Asia says to Rosalie, to Mother, to anyone who will listen. Mary’s inveigled her way in by rushing off to New York to nurse him when he was particularly vulnerable. How can Edwin be so blind to her scheming? She’d wanted to love Edwin’s wife like a sister, but she cannot, will not ever. This designing artful actress, this obscure daughter of Irish immigrants, deserves only contempt.

Her own marriage is perfect, her husband loyal and true. She thanks God for him every day. And yet, everyone, including Sleeper himself, knows she only married him to please Edwin. If Edwin had changed his mind, raised the slightest objection, she would have canceled the wedding instantly. She’s astonished that he won’t do the same for her.

She feels that the dark days of Father’s bigamy are returning, despite all her efforts to keep herself free of taint, to protect and burnish the great name Father left them. It’s as if she met a wild beast in the forest and ran and ran and ran only to arrive home at last and find it waiting there. Her usual tempestuous moods are alarmingly amplified by the hormones of pregnancy. She drowns her pillow in storms of tears.