"A lifetime would be nothing," he said again; "or it might be
everything wasted. Which are you--all soul and spirit, or none?"

"I don't know," she replied, in her bitter disappointment, her heart
pinched by the sharpest pain she remembered. There was the stir of
skirts at the door; Linda turned with a sense of relief to Amelia
Lowrie. However, dinner progressed very well indeed. "Then your
aunt," Elouise said to Pleydon, "was Carrie Dodge. I recall her
perfectly." That established, the Lowrie women talked with a
gracious freedom, exploring the furthermost infiltrations of blood
and marriages.

Linda was again serene. She watched Pleydon with an extraordinary
formless conviction--each of them was a part of the other's life;
while in some way marriage and love were now hopelessly confused. It
was beyond effort or planning. That was all she could grasp, but she
was contented. Sometimes when he talked he made the familiar
descriptive gesture with his hand, as if he were shaping the form of
his speech: a sculptor's gesture, Linda realized.

Later they wandered into the garden, a dark enclosure with the long
ivy-covered facade of the house broken by the lighted spaces of
windows. Beyond the fence at regular intervals an electric car
passed with an increasing and diminishing clangor. The white petals
of the magnolia-tree had fallen and been wheeled away; the blossoms
of the rhododendron were dead on their stems. It was, Linda felt, a
very old garden that had known many momentary emotions and lives.

Dodge Pleydon, standing before her, put his hands on her shoulders.
"Would I have any success?" he asked. "Do you think you'd care for