Lilian walked out onto a soaked path lined with box hedges. In the mild air she felt far from the world, out here visiting Aunt Tizzy. The day was too warm for January, the gutters running, the birds singing excitedly. Somewhere far off were her children, part of her, but far off, and the two men. She thought of their eyes. Gilbert’s pale ones with the kindness in them, and then Walter Vail’s dark eyes. She’d never had to strain after Gilbert, he was always there. He sat and waited, the waiting man. He tried like the rest of us to do his best, but … no, that wasn’t it. She thought of him entering a room, the mild face, the empty expression, and how it had once filled up when he saw her. Then she thought of Walter Vail, how he would enter a doorway, with a glance quick and hard, and saw how he was too full to let anything more in.

She stopped at a curb. For one moment she felt she was not leaning toward either of them and was standing on her own, alone, but not frightened by it. She thought: I could vanish, and no one would know I had gone. One day Aunt Tizzy would be gone, she didn’t want to think of it, how everyone kept leaving, one after the other, like the boys marching off. And what if she were the one who left? The thought bloomed inside her. Yes, she could go, she wasn’t trapped like Aunt Tizzy, she wasn’t asleep like Gilbert, she could do anything if it came to that. She stood and watched the motorcars go by.

At that moment she thought again of Walter Vail.

57 • The hotel

57 • The hotel

THERE WAS slush on the streets, her toes were wet in their boots. She had come right away after phoning him from Brookline. It was just before dinner. She had sat through tea with Elsie McDonnell and Marian Wiggin. She had dutifully watched the children eat, banging their heels against their chairs. She had been unable to concentrate on a sentence. Gilbert was coming back that night after dinner so she had told Maureen not to have anything for her, she was going out. As she put on her coat she thought of the pleasant, matter-of-fact tone of Walter Vail on the telephone. He did not seem to have any sense of the significance of what she’d proposed.