In Indiana, in Wrightsville, in the Jensens’ spacious old brick-and-stucco house on Arlington Boulevard, there was a good deal of hugging and kissing and exclamations of surprised delight. How pretty Monica was!—how good to see her again! The strain of confronting everyone after so long—nearly two years—was eased by the semihysteria of the holiday season. If Monica began crying suddenly no one took special notice; or, if so, her agitation was believed to have something to do with the holiday season and with the long rocky plane trip from Philadelphia.

Monica was to enjoy herself in Wrightsville, Monica was to relax, to look alertly about and to take her cues from other people. A time of suspension, a time of protracted innocence. In Wrightsville she had always been “Monica Jensen,” a daughter and a granddaughter, a sister, a niece, a cousin, long before she had become “Monica Bell” and disappeared somewhere in the East. This was the only place in the world where Monica had never not been “Monica Jensen,” which was comforting. Here, she was a young girl, still, newly confirmed in the Anglican faith. A daughter cherished by both her mother and her father. A very good student despite the fact that she was so extremely pretty, and often extremely careless about school. She took piano lessons each Saturday morning at ten o’clock from a plump perspiring woman of late middle age named Mrs. Martin who wore shiny dresses, ropes of pearls, and large button earrings, and who liked nothing better than to take Monica’s place on the piano stool and demonstrate, with zest, how her lesson should sound: “Now pay attention!—I will not repeat.” At school Monica had girl friends and boy friends, always a girl friend who was her “closest” friend and a boy friend who was her “steady,” though the identities of these girls and boys changed over fairly brief periods of time. Now, if she could recall a name she had no idea of its place in the sequence of years that constituted her school “life.”

Still, Wrightsville was the place of golden years, the place of small petty heart-stopping triumphs.

How pretty Monica is!—they said, eyeing her closely.

How wonderful to see Monica again, when was the last time she was here?—ran the voices.

The handsome gift Monica had originally bought for Sheila Trask was received with much enthusiasm by Monica’s sister-in-law. (“Why, this is beautiful, Monica,” Esther said softly, drawing the turquoise Peruvian shawl out of its wrapping, “—wherever did you find anything so beautiful,” she said, as if sensing the shawl’s high worth and the unlikelihood that it was truly meant for her.)

In all, the second wave of Monica’s presents went over well. Though there may have been some bewilderment among her family about why, so very suddenly, she had grown lavish, bountiful, nervously eager to please.