Amy, lying on her couch, very weary, facing a shadowy future, felt his
magnetism as he talked to her. It was as if life spoke through his lips.
Murray had sat there beside her only an hour before. He had brought her
roses but he had brought no hope.
Fear had for weeks kept Amy company. Through her nights and days it had
stalked, a pale spectre. And now Maxwell was saying: "You'll be well in
a month. Of course you'll come! There's room for half a dozen. You three
won't half fill the house."
It was decided, however, that Ethel must stay in town. Amy had a nervous
feeling that with the house closed Murray might slip away from them.
Old Molly Winchell, summing up the situation, said to Murray: "Of course
Anne will marry Maxwell Sears. There's nothing like propinquity."
Murray, startled, admitted the danger. "It would be an awful thing for
Anne."
"Why?"
"He's rather a bounder."
Old Molly Winchell hit him on the arm with her fan. Her eyes twinkled
maliciously. "He's nothing of the sort, and you know it. You're jealous,
Murray."
Murray's jealousy was, quite uniquely, not founded on any great depth of
love for Anne. His appropriation of the three sisters had been a pretty
and pleasant pastime. When he had finally decided upon Anne as the
pivotal center of his universe he had contemplated a future in which the
other sisters also figured--especially Amy. He had, indeed, not thought
of a world without Amy.
Her illness had troubled him, but not greatly. Things had always come to
him as he had wanted them, and he was quite sure that if Anne was to be
the flame to light his future, Providence would permit Amy to be, as it
were, the keeper of the light.