There wasn't one of
Lena's wines he could have turned his back on. After all, when she
worried him he could keep himself locked up in the studio away from
her.
There was Ethel Reeves; but Lena didn't worry about his being locked up
with _her_. She was very kind to Hippisley's secretary. Since she
wasn't dangerous, she liked to see her there, well housed, eating rich
food, and getting stronger and stronger every day.
I must say my heart bled for Lena when I thought of young Barbara. It
was still bleeding when one afternoon she walked in with her old
triumphant look; she wore her hat with an _air crane_, and the powder
on her face was even and intact, like the first pure fall of snow. She
looked ten years younger and I judged that Hippisley's affair with
Barbara was at an end.
Well--it had never had a beginning; nor the ghost of a beginning. It
had never happened at all. She had come to tell me that: that there was
nothing in it; nothing but her jealousy; the miserable, damnable
jealousy that made her think things. She said it would be a lesson to
her to trust him in the future not to go falling in love.
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