and left?"

But for all her ready argument, Nancy was sometimes wretchedly
unhappy. She had many a bitter cry about it all--tears interrupted
by the honking of motors in the road, and ended with a dash of
powder, a cold towel pressed to hot eyes, and the cheerful fiction
of a headache. It was all very well to laugh and chat over the
tea-cups, to accept compliments upon her lovely home and her
lovely children, but she knew herself a hypocrite even while she
did so. She could not say what was wrong, but something was wrong.

Even the children seemed changed to her in these days. The boys
were nice-looking, grinning little lads, in their linen suits and
white canvas hats, but somehow they did not seem to belong to her
any more. Her own boys, whose high chairs had stood in her kitchen
a few years ago, while she cut cookies for them and their father,
seemed to have no confidences to unfold, and no hopes to share
with their mother, now. Sometimes they quite obviously avoided the
society of the person who must eternally send them to wash their
hands, and exclaim at the condition of their knees. Sometimes they
whined and teased to go with her in the motor, and had to be
sternly asked by their father if they wished to be punished.
Pierre took them about with him on week days, and they played with
the other boys of the Gardens, eating too much and staying up too
late, but rarely in the way.

Anne was a shy, inarticulate little blonde now, thin, sensitive,
and plain. Her hair was straight, and she had lost her baby curls.
Nancy did what she could for her, with severe little smocks of
blue and lemon colour, and duly started her to school with the