“Disappearing.” Etta’s eyes turned vague until I guessed that Lydia Cantwell had become more real than me or where she was. “She’d be gone three or four hours and then come back late afternoon jittery and absentminded, like she was part scared and part somewhere else. I started making tea to settle her down. She’d never liked it but she got to taking it at the kitchen table where she would look out the window. She’d ask me to sit with her and then start talking about all sorts of things, wild almost, everything except about where she’d been or who she’d seen. Something in her couldn’t say that. I never asked. I didn’t want to press things.”

I said nothing. But silence and my face gave my thoughts away. “Things were understood,” she insisted. “Oh, they’d have their Manhattans and weekends they might give dinner parties for his parents or the Sumners or Cades, and she’d smile or even laugh, like nothing was wrong. But when I served them drinks I could tell how alone she was. I was the one who really saw her.”

“You, and at least one other.”

Understanding came into her eyes. “Yes,” she said coldly. “One.”

“When did you learn that?”

Her lids dropped and she placed her palms flat on the couch, speaking without emphasis or inflection. “One morning as soon as Mr. Henry was gone she dressed in a hurry and left. She was out longer than normal—five, six hours. I was dusting the staircase when she burst through the door looking flushed and half-crazy. Right away I ask if she wants tea. She flings down her red silk scarf, runs past me up the stairs, and slams the door behind her without answering. I wanted to go up after her. But I couldn’t. I just dusted.” Etta’s eyes were still hooded, her flatness of speech lending the trancelike quality of literal recall. “At four o’clock she came to the kitchen where I was, and says, ‘I’d like tea now,’ real quiet, like she’s sorry. I put one tea service in front of her. She looks up at me, then toward the other chair. ‘Please,’ she says.

“I sat down with my cup. You could see she’d been crying but her eyes were dry now. She looks at me very steady and says, ‘I’m pregnant.’

“She doesn’t say anything about Mr. Henry. She doesn’t have to. ‘What will you do?’ I ask.

“She looks sad. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘It’s all so hopeless. He’s married; I’m married. I’m not even sure I want him. He was just there.’

“‘What does he say?’ I ask.