for happiness in marriage. Magnolia wondered, sometimes, but certainly it was not for her to venture opinion. Her own marriage had been no such glittering example of perfection. Yet she wondered, seeing this well-ordered and respectful union, if Kim was not, after all, missing something. Wasn't marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded? Wasn't it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt? She was wrong, of course. Ken's manner toward Kim was polite, tender, thoughtful. Kim's manner toward Ken was polite, tender, thoughtful. Are you free next Thursday, dear? The Paynes are having those Russians. It might be rather interesting. . . . Sorry. Ken's voice. Soft, light. It was the—well Magnolia never acknowledged this, even to herself, but it was what she called the male interior decorator's voice. You heard it a good deal at teas, and at the Algonquin, and in the lobby between the acts on first nights and in those fascinating shops on Madison Avenue where furniture and old glass and brasses and pictures were shown you by slim young men with delicate hands. I mean! It's just one of those things.
There was no Mississippi in Kim. Kim was like the Illinois River of Magnolia's childhood days. Kim's life flowed tranquilly between gentle green-clad shores, orderly, well regulated, dependable.
