Chapter IV

Maud talked on. When she had finished, Evelyn hung up the receiver rather limply and sank back into her chair. So—Northrup was just a sort of a ... a town lover! He acted that way to every one! And, when he was sober, he was in love with Marjorie Blake! And Marjorie Blake was a dancer about twenty, slender and blonde and dimpled, a typical ingenue with blonde curls and a naughty smile, all pink and white and young ... and here she, Evelyn, was thirty-five and she had thought—hoped—that Northrup....

Suddenly, she hated Northrup and his love-making. How dared he kiss her—because he had been drinking? If she ever saw him again she wouldn’t speak to him at all. And he hadn’t even had the decency to apologize—or to talk to her when she had called him on the telephone! What a fool he must think her. She hated herself—she had been drinking a little, too. She hated him worst of all.

It was time to dress for dinner. Evelyn dressed hurriedly, putting on the gown she had altered that morning. How cheap it looked—like a shop-girl’s with the neck cut so low! It was too late to alter it and they were dining too informally for evening clothes. How silly she had been this morning about dresses! Why, she dressed very well for her position, nice things and conservative. What idiocy to think that men like one sort of thing and women another. Northrup—she shuddered.

The telephone rang. Evelyn ran to answer it herself. It was to announce that her car was waiting. She put on her hat, tucking her hair in neatly at the sides. Why—she was middle-aged ... getting middle-aged! Indian summer indeed! She didn’t even know any men except awful friends of Martin’s and the husbands of her friends. There wasn’t any one who gave her any attention at all. And now—one man, after drinking terrible punch and worse cocktails, had put his arms around her—kissed her—and it had kept her from sleeping, worried her all day. Even now there were dark circles under her eyes.

Martin ... oh, he was all right. She liked him, of course. Their life would go on, together, just the same. But now Evelyn knew that in some way this dipping into youth or an attempted youth had robbed her of something rather important—of really liking Martin—of appreciating him. She had looked up to him. But from now on Martin would be just a husband—unimportant—getting bald and fat. But then, she was just a wife, getting grey and fat, too, without an adventure. Indian summer? Evelyn doubted whether there really was such a season.

A LOVE AFFAIR