No, Walter Vail said, and he put his arm around her small-boned shoulders. The quiet in the room changed from a stiff and worried one. Thank goodness you’re not.

11 • He leaves impressions

11 • He leaves impressions

DOLLY CUSHING could hardly wait to give Lilian her impressions of Walter Vail and to find out where they had gone off to. Dolly stopped over after lunch, carrying shopping bags, and showed Lilian the presents she’d bought.

But he is terribly charming, she said. If I didn’t have Freddie … Dolly rolled her shoulders in a provocative way. I was watching him at the Cunninghams’. He didn’t take his eyes off you.

Lilian winced, wishing she’d kept the whole business to herself.

Dolly regarded her friend with a solemn face. Marry him, she said.

Lilian laughed, and turned her face to hide the blush. I’ve known him for a week, she said. It was the silliest idea she’d ever heard. Inside, however, something different was going on, the passing thought met with a strange note of reality, as if the idea of marrying Walter Vail had already taken up residence and was surprising her there, already in the room, settled in an armchair. Someone who knew Lilian better like Jane Olney, still down in Florida through January, might have suspected this deeper feeling, but Dolly Cushing had only a slight acquaintance with deeper feeling and had little notion of what her friend was going through.

Lilian related the facts concerning Nita Russell, treating her interference as something inconsequential, but Dolly immediately took it up as an intrigue.

This, she said, is dangerous. You must come to an agreement with him. And she proceeded to enumerate the various ways to do this. As she talked her voice took on a distant buzz, like flies on a summer day, leaving Lilian’s mind free to wander. She was recalling her kiss with Walter Vail. She knew better than to mention this to Dolly. She thought of the warm fingers of Walter Vail’s hand, she could feel them on her cheek, and as long as she thought of these things, Nita Russell was not a thought at all. Besides, she was seeing Walter Vail tonight! They’d arranged to meet after his dinner with Nita Russell. Why would he arrange a meeting if he weren’t interested?

Dolly left in a bustle of boxes and tissue paper and Lilian sank back into her reverie. But this time Nita Russell appeared. Lilian found herself picturing Walter Vail kissing the tall girl. Lilian was sure they had! His arm was curved around her back; she bent against it. Lilian watched in horror as the hand which moments before had been so soothing on her cheek became an image of torture as she watched it unbuttoning the pearl buttons of Nita Russell’s blouse and slipping inside.

12 • Dinner at the Eliots’

12 • Dinner at the Eliots’