her father disliked her restlessness in the family pew.
She was exceedingly pretty, with large, mocking dark eyes and raven hair, and also exceedingly flirtatious, and it was generally assumed that she would marry early and well. But this did not happen. Annie never seemed to fall in love. She turned from man to man; she broke a few hearts, but her own remained intact. She read dozens of novels, attended every play and opera, and acted as a lively hostess for her father, who ruthlessly relegated poor Joanna to temporary shade whenever Annie was available. She did not appear to be bored with any particular part of her life, but she was certainly bored with the whole. Rosalie told Dexter once that Annie's problem was that she believed in nothing.
When Rosalie and Dexter were first married, Annie took a great interest in helping them to arrange their house, spending almost more time with them than at her father's. Lily's husband, Rutgers Van Rensselaer, was too much older to be a satisfactory brother-in-law for Annie, but what she promptly dubbed Dexter's "high seriousness" seemed to give her just the foil she needed. Annie loved to play the iconoclast with him; she made a great thing of trying to shock him with her agnosticism. On the subject of art, however, they thought too much alike for dissension, and it was their accord rather than their dissension that brought about the first remonstrance from Rosalie.
They had been contemplating a little Kensett seascape of the rocky coastline near Newport that Dexter had just purchased and hung in the dining room.
"It's absolutely fantastic how he combines the mist with the clarity!" Annie exclaimed, clapping her hands. "It's just that particular moment, early in the morning, when the last bit of mist is about to blow away, and you know it's going to be the most beautiful day in the whole history of the world! And those sailboats ... you can hardly see them. And suddenly, yes, there they are, tiny specks of white, almost indistinguishable against the sky. It's a
trouvaille,
Dexter. You'll be a Maecenas!"
"Rosalie's not so sure."
"Oh, Rosalie's like Papa. She wants things to be just so. 'What does this man Kensett think he's painting? A clear day or a misty one? Why doesn't he make up his mind?'"
Annie adopted so comically Rosalie's "Do you call that art?" look that Dexter found himself bursting into disloyal laughter. It was this that Rosalie heard from the hall and that prompted her later to suggest to him that Annie should spend less time in their house.
"But why, darling?"
"Do I really have to tell you why, Dexter?"
That was all that was said on the subject, but it struck instant terror to his heart. Had he, without even being aware of it, wandered
that
close to the primrose path that had conducted his father straight to hell?
At first he had tried desperately to close his mind to the suggestion. Rosalie, like most young wives, was absurdly jealous and suspicious. All the Handy sisters resented Annie. But his arguments simply fell to pieces before the continued image in his mind of Rosalie's pointing finger. How could he not look where it pointed? How could he any longer delude himself that his attraction to Annie was that of a normally affectionate man for a kitten, a puppy dog, a bunny rabbit, a darling little girl not quite nubile? No, no, it was a burning lust.
The only reason he had been able to cover this over with such ridiculous veils and rags, like a nude male statue in an artist's studio hastily draped before the advent of a ladies' class, was that he had never been visited by a burning lust before. And suddenly, shockingly, a thrilling vision of what the life of the flesh might have been had he married Annie burst upon him!
But this vision did not stay. There was a kind of arid consolation in his rapid recognition that he had
not,
after all, missed the bliss of such a marriage. For such marriages simply did not exist. The intensity of his attraction to Annie
She was exceedingly pretty, with large, mocking dark eyes and raven hair, and also exceedingly flirtatious, and it was generally assumed that she would marry early and well. But this did not happen. Annie never seemed to fall in love. She turned from man to man; she broke a few hearts, but her own remained intact. She read dozens of novels, attended every play and opera, and acted as a lively hostess for her father, who ruthlessly relegated poor Joanna to temporary shade whenever Annie was available. She did not appear to be bored with any particular part of her life, but she was certainly bored with the whole. Rosalie told Dexter once that Annie's problem was that she believed in nothing.
When Rosalie and Dexter were first married, Annie took a great interest in helping them to arrange their house, spending almost more time with them than at her father's. Lily's husband, Rutgers Van Rensselaer, was too much older to be a satisfactory brother-in-law for Annie, but what she promptly dubbed Dexter's "high seriousness" seemed to give her just the foil she needed. Annie loved to play the iconoclast with him; she made a great thing of trying to shock him with her agnosticism. On the subject of art, however, they thought too much alike for dissension, and it was their accord rather than their dissension that brought about the first remonstrance from Rosalie.
They had been contemplating a little Kensett seascape of the rocky coastline near Newport that Dexter had just purchased and hung in the dining room.
"It's absolutely fantastic how he combines the mist with the clarity!" Annie exclaimed, clapping her hands. "It's just that particular moment, early in the morning, when the last bit of mist is about to blow away, and you know it's going to be the most beautiful day in the whole history of the world! And those sailboats ... you can hardly see them. And suddenly, yes, there they are, tiny specks of white, almost indistinguishable against the sky. It's a
trouvaille,
Dexter. You'll be a Maecenas!"
"Rosalie's not so sure."
"Oh, Rosalie's like Papa. She wants things to be just so. 'What does this man Kensett think he's painting? A clear day or a misty one? Why doesn't he make up his mind?'"
Annie adopted so comically Rosalie's "Do you call that art?" look that Dexter found himself bursting into disloyal laughter. It was this that Rosalie heard from the hall and that prompted her later to suggest to him that Annie should spend less time in their house.
"But why, darling?"
"Do I really have to tell you why, Dexter?"
That was all that was said on the subject, but it struck instant terror to his heart. Had he, without even being aware of it, wandered
that
close to the primrose path that had conducted his father straight to hell?
At first he had tried desperately to close his mind to the suggestion. Rosalie, like most young wives, was absurdly jealous and suspicious. All the Handy sisters resented Annie. But his arguments simply fell to pieces before the continued image in his mind of Rosalie's pointing finger. How could he not look where it pointed? How could he any longer delude himself that his attraction to Annie was that of a normally affectionate man for a kitten, a puppy dog, a bunny rabbit, a darling little girl not quite nubile? No, no, it was a burning lust.
The only reason he had been able to cover this over with such ridiculous veils and rags, like a nude male statue in an artist's studio hastily draped before the advent of a ladies' class, was that he had never been visited by a burning lust before. And suddenly, shockingly, a thrilling vision of what the life of the flesh might have been had he married Annie burst upon him!
But this vision did not stay. There was a kind of arid consolation in his rapid recognition that he had
not,
after all, missed the bliss of such a marriage. For such marriages simply did not exist. The intensity of his attraction to Annie
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