Stoner

That was one of the oddities of what they called "given opinion" that they learned that summer. They had been brought up in a tradition that told them in one way or another that the life of the mind and the life of the senses were separate and, indeed, inimical; they had believed, without ever having really thought about it, that one had to be chosen at some expense of the other. That the one could intensify the other had never occurred to them; and since the embodiment came before the recognition of the truth, it seemed a discovery that belonged to them alone. They began to collect these oddities of "given opinion," and they hoarded them as if they were treasures; it helped to isolate them from the world that would give them these opinions, and it helped draw them together in a small but moving way.

But there was another oddity of which Stoner became aware and of which he did not speak to Katherine. That was one that had to do with his relationship with his wife and daughter.

It was a relationship that, according to "given opinion," ought to have worsened steadily as what given opinion would describe as his "affair" went on. But it did no such thing. On the contrary, it seemed steadily to improve. His lengthening absences away from what he still had to call his "home" seemed to bring him closer to both Edith and Grace than he had been in years. He began to have for Edith a curious friendliness that was close to affection, and they even talked together, now and then, of nothing in particular. During that summer she even cleaned the glassed-in sun porch, had repaired the damage done by the weather, and put a day bed there, so that he no longer had to sleep on the living-room couch.

And sometimes on weekends she made calls upon neighbors and left Grace alone with her father. Occasionally Edith was away long enough for him to take walks in the country with his daughter. Away from the house Grace's hard, watchful reserve dropped away, and at times she smiled with a quietness and charm that Stoner had almost forgotten. She had grown rapidly in the last year and was very thin.

Only by an effort of the will could he remind himself that he was deceiving Edith. The two parts of his life were as separate as the two parts of a life can be; and though he knew that his powers of introspection were weak and that he was capable of self-deception, he could not make himself believe that he was doing harm to anyone for whom he felt responsibility.

He had no talent for dissimulation, nor did it occur to him to dissemble his affair with Katherine Driscoll; neither did it occur to him to display it for anyone to see. It did not seem possible to him that anyone on the outside might be aware of their affair, or even be interested in it.

It was, therefore, a deep yet impersonal shock when he discovered, at the end of the summer, that Edith knew something of the affair and that she had known of it almost from the beginning.

She spoke of it casually one morning while he lingered over his breakfast coffee, chatting with Grace. Edith spoke a little sharply, told Grace to stop dawdling over her breakfast, that she had an hour of piano practice before she could waste any time. William watched the thin, erect figure of his daughter walk out of the dining room and waited absently until he heard the first resonant tones coming from the old piano.

"Well," Edith said with some of the sharpness still in her voice, "you're a little late this morning, aren't you?"

William turned to her questioningly; the absent expression remained on his face.

Edith said, "Won't your little co-ed be angry if you keep her waiting?"

He felt a numbness come to his lips. "What?" he asked. "What's that?"

"Oh, Willy," Edith said and laughed indulgently. "Did you think I didn't know about your--little flirtation? Why, I've known it all along. What's her name? I heard it, but I've forgotten what it is."

In its shock and confusion his mind grasped but one word; and when he spoke his voice sounded to him petulantly annoyed. "You don't understand," he said. "There's no--flirtation, as you call it. It's--"

"Oh, Willy," she said and laughed again. "You look so flustered. Oh, I know all about these things. A man your age and all. It's natural, I suppose. At least they say it is."

For a moment he was silent. Then reluctantly he said, "Edith, if you want to talk about this--"

"No!" she said; there was an edge of fear in her voice. "There's nothing to talk about. Nothing at all."

And they did not then or thereafter talk about it. Most of the time Edith maintained the convention that it was his work that kept him away from home; but occasionally, and almost absently, she spoke the knowledge that was always somewhere within her. Sometimes she spoke playfully, with something like a teasing affection; sometimes she spoke with no feeling at all, as if it were the most casual topic of conversation she could imagine; sometimes she spoke petulantly, as if some triviality had annoyed her.