oyous occasion; there would be a quarter for him if he had been a good
boy, and some inner voice evidently was telling him that he had. There
was a red-and-white-striped camellia in his buttonhole, and his narrow
body was beautified by a dirty white waistcoat.

The New York train whistled. Lucy flicked the horse with the whip,
three handsome hatless heads were jerked backward, Cornelius Twombley's
peanut-shaped head was jerked forward, the voices of Jock and Hurry
made noises like excited tree frogs, and away they all flew toward the
station.

It was easy to picture the beaming faces that John Fulton could see
when he got off the train; it was [Transcriber's note: two words
obliterated here] hear the happy joyous voices all going at once, that
would greet him. If there was trouble in his life he would forget it
in those moments.

I turned into the Aiken Club feeling a little lonely. How good, I
thought, it would be to be met, even once, as Fulton is being met.

And now I must set down things that I did not know at this time, and
only found out afterward. And other things that are only approximately
true, things that wouldn't happen in my presence, but which I am very
sure must have happened.

When Lucy drove off at such a reckless pace to get to the station
before the train, I don't think it even occurred to her that during his
absence her feelings for her husband had changed in any way. It was
he, I think, who was the first to know that there was a change. He did
not realize it at the station or on the way home. How could he with
Jock and Hurry piled in his lap, and both talking two-forty, and Lucy
at his side, trying to make herself heard and even understood? No man
could. It must have been shortly after he got home, at that moment,
indeed, when he was alone with her, and his arms went out to her with
all the love and yearning accumulated at compound interest during
absence. Habit, and the wish to hurt no one, must have carried her
arms to tighten a little about him, and to lift her lips to him. Then
I think she must have turned her head a little, so that it was only her
cheek that he kissed. I imagine that until that time Fulton's
love-making had always found the swiftest response, that with those two
passion had always been as mutual and spontaneous as passion can be;
and that now, perhaps the very first time, his fire met with that which
it could not kindle into answering flame.

I do not think