"
Max would have said "Impossible," or something else trite. The
Harbison man looked at me with interested, serious eyes.
"Is it too late to undo it?" he asked.
And then and there I determined that he should never know the
truth. He could go back to South America and build bridges and
make love to the Spanish girls (or are they Spanish down there?)
and think of me always as a married woman, married to a
dilettante artist, inclined to be stout--the artist, not I--and
with an Aunt Selina Caruthers who made buttons and believed in
the Cause. But never, NEVER should he think of me as a silly
little fool who pretended that she was the other man's wife and
had a lump in her throat because when a really nice man came
along, a man who knew something more than polo and motors, she
had to carry on the deception to keep his respect, and be sedate
and matronly, and see him change from perfect open admiration at
first to a hands-off-she-is-my-host's-wife attitude at last.
"It can never be undone," I said soberly.
Well, that's the picture as nearly as I can draw it: a round
table with a low centerpiece of orchids in lavenders and pink,
old silver candlesticks with filigree shades against the somber
wainscoting; nine people, two of them unhappy--Jim and I; one of
them complacent--Aunt Selina; one puzzled--Mr.
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