I had been exposed and showed symptoms—going off alone for long walks and consuming reams of theme paper as if I was half mad. I told Lucy that my heart was too hard to break, but I couldn't convince her. There wasn't a day passed but that she planned some form of amusement or diversion. Even Will, her husband, cooperated and spent long evenings playing rum or three-handed auction, so I might not sit idle. I tried to fall in with Lucy's plans.
"But, please, no men! I don't want to see another man for years. If any man I know finds out I'm here, tell him I won't see him, absolutely," I warned. "I want to be alone. I want to think things out undisturbed. Sometimes I almost wish I could enter a convent."
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Lucy would exclaim.
"You needn't be. You didn't break my engagement. For heaven's sake, Lucy, you needn't take it so hard."
But she did. She simply brooded over me. She read to me, smiled for me, and initiated every sally that I made into public. In conversation she picked her way with me with the precaution of a cat walking across a table covered with delicate china. She made wide detours to avoid a reference or remark that might reflect upon my engagement. Will did likewise. I lived in daily surprise and wonder. As a family we are brutally frank. This was a new phase, and one of the indirect results, I suppose, of my broken engagement.
What I am trying to arrive at is the change of atti-
