choice, and maybe this will help. Do what you think is best. I only want you to be happy."
Kay almost broke her heart over that when she saw it.
Later on, able to think it over more calmly, she realized that one cannot devise happiness by will.
Henry had resumed his life decorously and regularly; save for the band of crêpe on his left arm he exhibited no signs of his loss. He was more detached, perhaps. He spent more hours in his library, looking ahead at nothing at all. But for any part Kay had in his life she might not have been in the house. His office, his club, his dinner, and then an early going to bed comprised his days. He went to church as usual, creaked decorously up the aisle for the plate, passed it, returned with it, stood until the offertory was finished and the morning collection elevated before the altar, returned to his seat. At the proper times he prayed.
But now and then she found his eyes on her, with a furtive sort of appeal in them. It never went further than that, and as the days went and he resumed his ordinary routine she wondered if she had been mistaken. Did he need her? Or did he care? They were not often alone; his friends dropped in, elderly men like himself, prosperous, slightly dull, their illusions lost, their enthusiasms long dead. She studied them sometimes.
Did men, like women and even life-itself, reach a climacteric, and was everything sterile after that? Was the very essence of life creation; and when that power went did all zest go with it? These men seemed to ask so little of life; good food and comfortable shelter, a busy day at the office, a few old friends. Did they ever lie awake at night and listen to the clock ticking away the time? Time, which was all they had left, and which was rapidly decreasing.
She contrasted them with the men she knew in the West, men as old as themselves, but fighting to the end; wearing out, not rusting. Perhaps success was like happiness; there was no such thing. It was only the fight for it that mattered. When you need not fight any more
It was not until three weeks after her mother's death that the question of her future course became imminent. Her
