XIII

Early dawn. The windows showed blue rather than white. Alan and Ted lay sprawled in the wide bed.

Ethel Grandin appeared in the doorway. She stood there hesitantly for a long moment, and then came quietly in. She went to the bed. Erect, lost in thought, she looked down at the sleeping children.

Ted was flat on his back in innocent immobile sleep. Alan slept on his right side, one knee bent and one leg thrust straight down, the left wrist and hand dangling loosely over the edge, exactly like his father. A faint dew of perspiration lay upon their clear foreheads and upper lips.

It was the climax of a dreadful week. Like most of the other nights, her night had again been utterly without sleep, a wakeful nightmare so charged with uncertainty and fear that she could not remember going to bed or getting up. It had been like an agony of birth, and the one reborn was herself. For now with the light of morning growing at the windows, and the sight of the soundlessly sleeping sweaty children, her fears vanished: unaccountably she felt rested and released.

Here is where her love lay and would always lie; through her sons she felt her love for her husband more keenly than ever, more finally, almost as if she had never truly loved him till now. Gazing at her two little boys, she knew how much she wanted him, and that she could never be unwanted again—by them or by him.

What, after all, had happened? Among her husband’s things she had found an overseas cap, the overseas cap of a young man they had both been fond of. Nothing more—no more than that. When she confronted him with it and voiced the awful charge, he had explained what it meant and did not mean; and in her fright, she had refused to believe him. She believed him now, she pitied him with all her heart, and she loved him. He was the one who had understood, been fully aware of the danger, and himself rejected the impossible infatuation. Had he gone recklessly on, with no thought of their marriage or of her, then she would have had cause for leaving him indeed. But he had not. “Is Cliff more important than we are?” he had asked; “Not to me he isn’t.” And even though she had gone off and left him there on the island, with every opportunity of seeing Cliff alone, she knew that Cliff was an episode already past: neither of them would ever be seeing him again.

She returned to her room, took up pencil and paper, and in a few moments she had composed the letter which should have been written days ago. An hour later, it was on its way, air mail and Special Delivery; and by mid-morning, herself again, she had organized her parents and children for a picnic at Old Orchard beach.