One night, a week later, during which interval he had
played no cards, he came home at eleven from a stag dinner at the
University Club, just preceding Ida's return from the Alstone poi
supper and dance. And Sonny had driven her home. Major Fanklin
and his wife had first been dropped off by them, they mentioned, at
Fort Shafter, on the other side of town and miles away from the
beach.
Lee Barton, after all mere human man, as a human man unfailingly
meeting Sonny in all friendliness, suffered poignantly in secret.
Not even Ida dreamed that he suffered; and she went her merry,
careless, laughing way, secure in her own heart, although a trifle
perplexed at her husband's increase in number of pre-dinner
cocktails.
Apparently, as always, she had access to almost all of him; but now
she did not have access to his unguessable torment, nor to the long
parallel columns of mental book-keeping running their totalling
balances from moment to moment, day and night, in his brain. In
one column were her undoubtable spontaneous expressions of her
usual love and care for him, her many acts of comfort-serving and
of advice-asking and advice-obeying.
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