says--he's supposed to be on a vacation
and I haven't seen him look the way he does tonight since some of the
tight squeezes in the war."

XXXVI

It all started by having too much Mrs. Winters at a time, Nancy
decided later. Mrs. Winters went down with comparative painlessness in
homeopathic doses but Mrs. Winters day in and day out was too much like
being forcibly fed with thick raspberry syrup. And then there had been
walking up the Avenue from the Library alone the evening before--and
remembering walks with Oliver--and coming across that copy of the
"Shropshire Lad" in Mrs. Winters' bookcase and thinking just how
Oliver's voice had sounded when he read it aloud to her--a process of
some difficulty, she recalled, because he had tried to read with an arm
around her. And then all the next day as she tried to work nothing but
Oliver, Oliver, running through her mind softshoed like a light and
tireless runner, crumbling all proper dignity and good resolutions away
from her, little hard pebble by little hard pebble, till she had finally
given up altogether, called up Vanamee and Company on the telephone and
asked, with her heart in her mouth, if Mr. Oliver Crowe were there. The
reply that came seemed unreal somehow--she had been so sure he would be
and every nerve in her body had been so strung to wonder at what she was
going to say or do when he finally answered, that the news that he had
left three weeks before brought her down to earth as suddenly as if she
had been tripped. All she could think of was that it must be because of
her that Oliver had left the company--and illogically picture a starving
Oliver painfully wandering the streets of New York and gazing at the
food displayed in restaurant windows with lost and hopeless eyes.

Then she shook herself--what nonsense--he must be at Melgrove. She
couldn't call him up at Melgrove, though, he mightn't be there when she
'phoned and then his family would answer and what his family must think
of her now, when they'd been so perfectly lovely when she and Oliver
were first engaged--she shivered a little--no, that wouldn't do. And
letters never really said things--it mustn't be letters--besides, she
thought, humbly, it would be so awful to have Oliver send letters back
unopened. Two weeks of pure Mrs. Winters had chastened Nancy to an
unusual degree.

For all that though, it was not until Mrs. Winters had left her alone
for the evening after offering her an invitat