The coffee bubbled in the percolator. It was warm here in the big old-fashioned kitchen. And Julia looked around it gratefully, at the pots of African violets on the window sill, at the Currier and Ives calendar of Thanksgiving Day on the wall. She felt released, freed from some prison, the prison of her narrow resentment of Damon. Two days ago she would have been incapable of the real inner gesture of respect and love from which her words had come. If things were right at the center, mightn’t one from there reach out into the world in concentric circles? Did it all in the end come back to personal relationships after all? She felt his eyes on her face like a touch, was suddenly shy.

“You’re reading my thoughts,” she said, blushing, hearing his delighted laugh.

“Oh Julia …” He came round the table and kissed the top of her head, then went to get the coffee off the stove. More than the kiss this meant, I love you. For it was rarely that Damon helped her in any way about the kitchen or house. When he did, it was like an endearment.

“Thank you, darling.”

They drank their coffee in silence, for there was no longer the driving need to batter down barriers with words.

“That Isabel is a very attractive woman,” Damon said, leaning back in his chair, relaxed, smoking a cigarette.

“I suppose she is.” Julia hesitated. “I felt so sorry for her. She seemed like a person from the moon—do you suppose she has ever thought about any of this—except to be annoyed with Edward for exposing the family? She seemed so”—Julia discarded the word “innocent” and searched for another—“intact—yes, that’s it. She seemed so intact.”

“She looked on us as specimens, that was clear,” Damon said with a faraway look in his eyes which Julia knew well.

“It’s just as well, darling, that she will be leaving soon and can’t discover that you’re flesh and blood.”

“You see too much, Julia,” he was half-amused, half-irritated.

“You’re pretty transparent, my friend.”

“Yes.” But his thoughts were running on. “Edward was intact too. Something held them back, stopped them in that family. Oh, Julia, if Edward could have looked at a woman like that——”

“Don’t,” Julia said. She couldn’t bear this. It seemed queer, almost sacrilegious while the coffin hurtled across the country in the train. “Let him rest in peace.”