CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
If Lydia Canfield expected her engagement to Malcolm Crane to bring her ease, she was bitterly disappointed. She discovered, as others have discovered before her, that a promise to one man will not force another man out of mind. One may will to give one’s self, but one cannot will to forget, for the function of remembering is independent of the will. For reasons of justice and self-preservation it has been made automatic. Yet Lydia did experience a certain sensation of safety; Malcolm Crane was a bulwark between her and Angus which could not be scaled.
On the morning after Lydia announced her engagement, Myrtle Cuyler, as in duty bound she was, came to talk it over. She came to express her surprise—although she felt that surprise over any action of Lydia’s was not altogether to be justified, because the unusual was the usual in so far as Lydia’s actions and motives were concerned…. She was disappointed, too, and hurt for Angus’s sake…. Myrtle found Lydia swollen-eyed, secluded in her room, looking as
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