“Why would he have married you? Or stayed married? He established that he was capable of divorce. If he was as secretive as you’ve suggested, he made attachments slowly and firmly. The two go together. If there was another woman, you would have known about it, one way or another, long ago.”

“Yes, I see. You’re right.” She turned back to the address book.

Florence glanced at him. Florence had never met anyone like Norma MacIver, and she did not know how to react. Leland had to think of Mrs. MacIver as one of those people who were stronger than they realized. Often they said more about themselves than they had to, and tried to draw people closer to them than most people cared to go. Leland guessed that Florence was still bristling over the incident in the ladies’ room, when Mrs. MacIver had made such good use of her. It didn’t count for much, actually, because Florence would have disliked Mrs. MacIver anyway. Mrs. MacIver’s desperate scrabbling was beyond the comprehension of a girl who thought she had little difficulty finding ways of doing the things she wanted to do. To Leland it was apparent that Mrs. MacIver did not figure her native talents in the equation of her goals—she did things because they had to be done. Perhaps the figuring was done in the same clumsy, shattered way she had got herself here this morning—but here she was, and if she had asked for a lot from Leland and Florence—and Miller—she had not asked for sympathy. She wanted love, that was clear, but she did not expect to be liked. Leland liked her, but he did not know if he could have her around for long. The interesting, difficult thing about her drained him.

He had been talking about himself when he had said that a man who was closemouthed made his attachments slowly. He had known men who told nothing about themselves and had emotional lives as tangled as international law. Looking at the man’s wife, Leland could not believe that MacIver was one of these; but Leland had to hold the reservation that a certain kind of honest man, in the psychological upheaval that might have preceded a death like MacIver’s, could have deeply misled a woman who seemed to need to be dead-honest with men.

Leland turned to read upside down the names and addresses that Florence had transcribed.