He was glad--a show of affection would
have been unsupportable. But his marriage was becoming precarious; Lee
seemed to be without power to execute his firm intentions; a conviction
of insecurity settled over him. The sense of a familiar difficulty
returned; there was nothing for him to do but order his life on a
common pattern and face an unrelieved futility of years. He remembered,
with a grim amusement, the excellent advice he had given Peyton Morris,
Peyton at the verge of falling from the approved heights into the
unpredictable. If he had come to him now in that quandary, what would
he, Lee, have said? Yet all that he had told Peyton he still believed--
the variety of life lay on the circular moving horizon, there was none
at hand. But now he comprehended the unmeasurable longing that had, for
the time, banished every other consideration from the younger man. It
had upset his heredity, his violent prejudices, and his not negligible
religion.
Peyton, too, had fallen under the charm of Cytherea; but chance--was it
fortunate?--had restrained him. Lee had seen Morris the evening before,
at a dinner with Claire, and he had been silent, abstracted. He had
scarcely acknowledged Lee Randon's presence. The Morrises had avoided
him. Still, that was inevitable, since, for them, he was charged with
unpleasant memories.
He collected in thought all the married people who, he knew, were
unhappy or dissatisfied: eleven of the eighteen Lee called to mind.
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