She had lunch with Dolly Vernon and Marian Wiggin, both old married ladies as they saw it. They pored over the same topics, other people, who was engaged, who had cut whom, how the children were behaving. Dolly talked about Freddie’s family and described a ball she’d been to with an insect theme. Marian had gone to dinner at the Amorys’ and said it was frightfully grand. Dolly wondered if she should cut her hair the way other girls were doing — Sis Sedgwick had cut hers which was daring for Sis — and Marian said she didn’t think she herself had the nerve. Lilian had promised Gilbert never to cut off her hair and remained silent. In the powder room, she thought that her being married had changed her more than she realized. She felt as if she were filled up completely with Gilbert Finch and had nothing else to say to anyone.

Of course there was the house to occupy her. She’d had a new banister put in and the pipes replaced in the kitchen. The dining room chairs were upholstered in a reasonable French silk, new curtains were measured for the guest rooms. She felt she was spinning a cocoon.

She read, but that was different too. The people in her books — for she thought of them as people rather than characters — were no longer the dazzling spirits near to her face the way they’d once been, sending off waves of sensation, now they were more like companions, sitting across the room in armchairs, the way her dearest Gilbert did, at night home from the office.

Everything was shifted.

One Friday afternoon in February Gilbert came home early from work, surprising Lilian. It was an Indian summer day, and since they’d not put out the iron garden furniture, Lilian had carried out a rush-seated chair from inside and was sitting with her back to the bricks and shriveled ivy, facing the tiny plot of land they expansively called the garden, reading a book in the thin sunshine.

When he stepped out of the french doors Lilian jumped a little, and he put both hands on her arm to calm her, smiling, hiding his teeth as if to contain his happiness. She smiled back. His coat was rumpled and his tie was off to the side. At first she didn’t understand his liquid slow manner. It was the weather, she thought, which made it seem as if they were underwater. He took her elbow, and pulled her to her feet in one languid motion. Then she understood.

Lilian would always remember how from their room they could hear Maureen moving pots in the kitchen, and could hear a motorcar backfire down in the street.