tinuous torture to him in this house built on the foundations of conscientious endeavor. He was obliged to maintain a pose, and it went against his grain to pose before Rhoda, who was the soul of candor. It wouldn't have been so difficult if Rhoda had merely tacitly accepted his hypothetical status as a painter of promise and a master pagan; but she backed him up in the role, introducing him with transparent pride, though Grover suspected that it had cost her a good deal to admit to her friends what changes had taken place in him. Perhaps, he reflected, she had taken his rejections of her more to heart than anyone had realized; perhaps her only means of reconciling herself to her disappointment was in the exaggeration of his remoteness from all that made up her own life. On the other hand, perhaps grief and business cares were rendering her indifferent: that would account for the impersonality of the kindness she showed him, the hundred and one casual attentions that a good hostess and a generous friend never lose sight of.
Something had happened to Rhoda. Either deliberately or inadvertently she had blinded herself. Except where her business was concerned; for business had crystallized her, pared, sheared, and whittled. Even her physical contours were finer, and hardened as though in a glazing oven.
"Why don't you run into town for a day or two?" she suggested one morning as he stood at the window watching the rain on the snow.
