Then came the evening when Jim Dyckman telephoned her that he could
not keep his appointment with her. It was the evening he responded
to Charity Coe's appeal and met Peter Cheever fist to fist. Kedzie
heard, in the polite lie he told, a certain tang of prevarication,
and that frightened her. Why was Jim Dyckman trying to shake her?
Once begun, where would the habit end?
That was a dull evening for Kedzie. She stuck at home without other
society than her boredom and her terrors. She had few resources for
the enrichment of solitude. She tried to read, but she could not
find a popular novel or a short story in a magazine exciting enough
to keep her mind off the excruciating mystery of the next instalment
in her own life. Her heart ached with the fear that she might never
know the majesty of being Mrs. Jim Dyckman. That almost royal
prerogative grew more and more precious the more she feared to lose
it. She imagined the glory with a ridiculous extravagance. Her
theory of the life lived by the wealthy aristocrats was fantastic,
but she liked it and longed for it.
The next day she waited to hear from Jim till she could endure the
anxiety no longer. She ventured to call him at his father's home.
She waited with trepidation while she was put through to his room,
but his enthusiasm when he recognized her voice refreshed her hopes
and her pride. She did not know that part of her welcome was due to
the fierce rebuke Charity Coe had inflicted on him a little before
because he had mauled her husband into a wreck.
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