Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton

perplexedly at his former wife, and
she saw he had lost all sense of the impropriety and folly of the
affair in his famished enjoyment of its spicy details.
    "I don't know—I understood it WAS too late; and that Manford was
urging them to do it."
    Pauline made a slight movement of impatience. "Dexter—of course!
When he sees a 'case'! I suppose lawyers are all alike. At any
rate, I can't make him understand…" She broke off, suddenly
aware that the rôles were reversed, and that for the first time she
was disparaging her second husband to her first. "Besides," she
hurried on, "it's no affair of Dexter's if the Lindons choose to
dishonour their child publicly. They're not HIS relations; Bee is
not HIS cousin's daughter. But you and I—how can we help feeling
differently? Bee and Nona and Jim were all brought up together.
You must help me to stop this scandal! You must send for Grant
Lindon at once. He's sure to listen to you … you've always had
a great influence on Grant…"
    She found herself, in her extremity, using the very arguments she
had addressed to Manford, and she saw at once that in this case
they were more effective. Wyant drew himself up stiffly with a
faint smile of satisfaction. Involuntarily he ran a thin gouty
hand through his hair, and tried for a glimpse of himself in the
mirror.
    "Think so—really? Of course when Grant was a boy he used to
consider me a great fellow. But now … who remembers me in my
dingy corner?"
    Pauline rose with her clear wintry smile. "A good many of us, it
seems. You tell me I'm the third lady to call on you today! You
know well enough, Arthur—" she brushed the name in lightly, on the
extreme tip of her smile—"that the opinion of people like you
still counts in New York, even in these times. Imagine what your
mother would have felt at the idea of Fanny and Bee figuring in all
the daily headlines, with reporters and photographers in a queue on
the doorstep! I'm glad she hasn't lived to see it."
    She knew that Wyant's facile irony always melted before an
emotional appeal, especially if made in his mother's name. He
blinked unsteadily, and flung away the "Looker–on."
    "You're dead right: they're a pack of fools. There are no
standards left. I'll do what I can; I'll telephone to Grant to
look in on his way home this evening… I say, Pauline: what's
the truth of it all, anyhow? If I'm to give him a talking to I
ought to know." His eyes again lit up with curiosity.
    "Truth of it? There isn't any—it's the silliest mare's–nest!
Why, I'm going to Dawnside for a rest–cure next month, while
Dexter's tarpon–fishing. The Mahatma is worlds above all this
tattle—it's for the Lindons I'm anxious, not him."
    The paper thrown aside by Wyant had dropped to the floor, face
upward at a full–page picture—THE picture. Pauline, on her way
out, mechanically yielded to her instinct for universal tidying,
and bent to pick it up; bent and looked. Her eyes were still keen;
passing over the noxious caption "Dawnside Co–Eds," they
immediately singled out Bee Lindon from the capering round; then
travelled on, amazed, to another denuded nymph … whose face,
whose movements… Incredible! … For a second Pauline
refused to accept what her eyes reported. Sick and unnerved, she
folded the picture away and laid the magazine on a table.
    "Oh, don't bother about picking up that paper. Sorry there's no
one to show you out!" she heard Wyant calling. She went
downstairs, blind, unbelieving, hardly knowing how she got into her
motor.
    Barely time to get home, change, and be in the Chair, her address
before her, when the Mothers arrived in their multitude…

IX
    Well, perhaps Dexter would understand NOW the need of hushing up
the Grant Lindons… The picture might be a libel, of course—
such things, Pauline knew, could be patched up out of quite
unrelated photographs. The dancing circle might have been
skilfully fitted into the Dawnside patio, and goodness knew what
shameless creatures have