“He hated Father. He wanted to break away from all that.” Isabel felt cornered. Was there no way out? Must she face this tearing in the family again, bring it out to be searched by those hawk’s eyes? Her hand was trembling.

“All what?”

“Father was a banker, a Republican of course, and very sure that he was right about everything. He had no patience with failure of any kind. If people were out of work, it was their fault, and so on. He and Edward hit each other head on about everything, as you can see,” and she smiled. It was getting less hard as she talked. She almost wanted to tell them now. “But that wasn’t it—not really—it was, I think, that father never tried to understand Edward, wouldn’t, made up his mind not to. Just like Edward. They walled themselves in against each other. It got so I dreaded every meal because of the arguments. But there was something powerful about Father, very powerful. He had a brilliant hard mind …” She faltered and turned now rather shyly to Grace, “I guess that’s the real answer to your question.”

“He does sound rather difficult,” Grace said with a slightly malicious smile.

“I expect he does to you. But surely”—Isabel felt she must fight their sense of isolated superiority, this little self-enclosed world which took so much for granted—“there isn’t only one way of looking at things? Surely it’s possible honestly to disagree and still to respect people, even Republicans,” she added. She turned helplessly to Julia.

“Oh, we’re all full of poison,” Julia answered gently.

“You’re so sure you’re right. It seems to me you live here in a kind of—” she hesitated, looking for a word.

“Ivory tower? But didn’t your father live in an ivory tower?” Grace laughed a short laugh. “It’s rather droll that we should be accused of that. Most people accused Edward of meddling too much in the world, of refusing to stay safely in the ivory tower.”

“I don’t know,” Isabel retreated. She felt again the dry wind of passion assailing her. “I live in such a different world.” She thought of Henry, her husband, playing bridge now with the Eriksons across the street, relaxing slowly after his high-pressure day at the hospital, thought of him with nostalgia, the safety, the coziness of their lives where these winds did not blow.

“But you have to take sides,” Grace said relentlessly, sitting up a little straighter, “in any world. You have to make up your mind, go the way things are going or fight the way things are going.”

“The Republicans have been fighting the way things are going for quite some time,” Isabel said quietly.