"What sort of talk?"

"Oh, gossip. You'll hear it. Everybody's talking about it. It's
doing him a lot of harm."

"I don't believe it," Elizabeth flared. "This town hasn't anything
else to do, and so it talks. It makes me sick."

She did not attempt to analyze the twisted motives that made Clare
belittle what she professed to love. And she did not ask what the
gossip was. Half way up Palmer Lane she turned in at the cement
path between borders of early perennials which led to the white
Wheeler house. She was flushed and angry, hating Clare for her
unsolicited confidence and her malice, hating even Haverly, that
smiling, tree-shaded suburb which "talked."

She opened the door quietly and went in. Micky, the Irish terrier,
lay asleep at the foot of the stairs, and her father's voice,
reading aloud, came pleasantly from the living room. Suddenly her
sense of resentment died. With the closing of the front door the
peace of the house enveloped her. What did it matter if, beyond
that door, there were unrequited love and petty gossip, and even
tragedy? Not that she put all that into conscious thought; she had
merely a sensation of sanctuary and peace. Here, within these four
walls, were all that one should need, love and security and quiet
happiness. Walter Wheeler, pausing to turn a page, heard her singing
as she went up the stairs. In the moment of the turning he too had
a flash of content. Twenty-five years of married life and all well;
Nina married, Jim out of college, Elizabeth singing her way up the