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“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Telling doesn’t help.”

“Oh, yes, it does, my dear. Do you suppose that if I had known, I would have dragged you from one sale to another, boring you with such unimportant details as trimmings and findings? No, indeedy! We’d have gone home to my apartment and talked about Jimmy, and cuddled the baby.”

Claire covered her eyes quickly with a shaking hand.

“Oh, I couldn’t have stood that. This has been much better. It’s helped me to forget for a little while.”

Mrs. Larry shook her head.

“Oh, no, it hasn’t. You’re not the kind to forget. You’re too sweet and womanly and loyal, and you’re going to tell me what happened,—why you sent Jimmy away.”

“Because I love him too well to marry him.”

Mrs. Larry’s pretty oval face clouded. She was essentially a normal, single-minded woman. To her way of thinking, if you loved a man, you married him and made him happy. You did not send him off to another city to live among strangers, quite probably in some fussy, musty boarding-house. Subtleties of this sort positively annoyed her. They seemed so unnecessary, so futile. However, she cloaked her real feelings and threw an extra sympathetic note into her next speech.