But when she heard Cheever come home at midnight and
go to his room without speaking to her she felt a grim resentment
toward him that was like a young hate with a big future.
Every night Charity received a typewritten document describing
Cheever's itinerary for the day. The mute, inglorious Boswell took
him up at the front steps, heeled him to his office, out to lunch,
back to the office, thence to wherever he went.
The name of Zada did not appear in the first report at all, but on
the second day she met Cheever at luncheon, and he went shopping with
her. Charity, reading, flushed to learn that he bought her neither
jewelry nor hats, but household supplies and delicacies. He went with
her to her apartment and thence with her to dinner and the theater
and then back, and thence again after an hour to his home.
The minute chronicle of his outdoor doings, intercalated with the
maddening bafflement of his life in that impenetrable apartment, made
such dramatic reading as Charity had never known. She grew haggard
with waiting for the arrival of her little private daily newspaper.
When she saw Cheever she could hardly keep from screaming at him
what she knew. His every entrance into the house became a hideous
insult. She felt that it was herself who was the kept woman and not
the other.
She longed to take the documents and visit the Reverend Doctor Mosely
with them, make him read them and tell her if he still thought it was
her duty to endure such infamy.
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