he had sent Fidelia away; she had come in her blue dress and silver slippers believing that, but finding it not true, what was the difference to her?
He asked, humbly, "When can I talk with you?"
"Whenever you want to."
"Where?"
His words aggravated in Alice another where; where was Fidelia gone? Alice asked it. "Where's she gone?"
"Fidelia? She's gone to London."
"England?"
"England."
"But why?"
"I'll tell you, Alice; she has a husband there."
"A husband!"
"That's what she has." He gasped as he said it and he looked around and asked, "Have you got to dance with that fellow now?"
"I can't. I mean, it doesn't make any difference. I'm in a party; I'm not with anybody in particular."
"Come along then." And she accompanied him, not asking where he led.
She was struggling with the tremendous thing he had told her when he said Fidelia had a husband in London. It must mean that she had had a husband before she married David; and when a girl had a husband, she was not really married to the second man at all; it must mean that David never was really her husband and he was not her husband now.
Alice sat down on a lounge and he was beside her; they had come to a corner of a parlor where was no one else.
