Each evening he pulled radishes from the garden, and in the cool kitchen smelling of gas, sliced white nicks in the rosy red and chopped ice off a block and arranged it all in a bowl. He sat out on the piazza in a slatted green chair, a drink within arm’s reach, reading his book. Through the pine trees, people next door could be heard on the tennis courts, the ball batting dully. He was interrupted by the children, Fay at the screen door asking him where Anna had gone with Sally. He did not know. Had he seen them? Not recently. They were supposed to be going to the Cobbs’, said Fay with a ten-year-old’s exasperation. He said he knew nothing about the Cobbs and popped a radish into his mouth. Fay stamped her foot. Pa, she said. He looked at her, and saw a brow riddled with lines. Why was it that the females around him were perpetually worried? How he wished they would leave him out of it. There was never anything he could do. He knew this with such clarity, why didn’t they?

They moved back to Boston and the fall season began.

Back among the yellow leaves and the all-day rain Lilian felt the glow of her memory dim and the construction of her wing grow shaky. Sometimes it was difficult to reach it — as if the light had blown in the hall, or the door were jammed. Or once there it might seem smaller than before, the ceiling lower, the air oppressive.

She had had no word from him.

She did not expect a letter, though some unreasonable part of her did, and the whole of her suffered as a result. She relived the pains of years before, mortified to be repeating them. Just one letter would placate her. It was not asking for much! And yet, with a start she was aware of asking for something.

There had never been any question of the future. He had not mentioned anything — it was absurd to think of it — and even if he had, well, there were her children, and she was married to Gilbert.

With dissatisfaction the memory began to alter, and the room darkened from a bright place to a blacker one: there was a strange burnished light, thunder threatened outside, the curtains looked dingy, and the fire smoked sullenly.

She went out her usual amount, determined that her outward life not be changed. At a number of visits she found herself drawn to old Mrs. Amory simply for the fact of her having had the tête-à-tête with Walter Vail that night on the Island. She took up books about architecture and read them with interest.