“I'll meet her,” he heard Peyton say, and realized that they were still talking about Mina Raff. She wouldn't attract him, Lee Randon, in the least, he was sure of that ... no wistful April moon. What, then, did engage him? He was unable to say, he didn't know. It was something intangible, a charm without definite form; and his thoughts returned to Cytherea--if he could grasp the secret of her fascination he would be able to settle a great many disturbing feelings and needs. Yes, what she mutely expressed was what, beneath his comprehension, he had come to long for. He had never recognized it as the property of any woman nor satisfied it in himself. Here, certainly, his loyalty, his affection for Fanny, weren't damaged; he was, he thought, beyond assault there. It was only that, together with his fidelity to his wife, an increasing uneasiness possessed him, an unabated separate interest in life, in women. He was searching for something essential, he couldn't discover what; but, dismissing the problem of how he'd act if he found it, the profound conviction remained that when his hopeful quest was over then indeed he'd be old, finished, drained. Lee Randon secretly cherished, jealously guarded, that restless, vital reaching for the indefinable perfection of his hidden desire. For a flash it was almost perceptible in Anette, her head half-buried in the darkness of the divan behind the rise and fall of her breasts in a close sweater of Jaeger wool. * * * * * She stirred, smiled at him absently, and, with Peyton's assistance, rose. The long room, unlighted except for the fire, was lost in obscurity; the blackness against the window-panes was absolute. Outside, however, Lee found a lingering glint of day; the snow had stopped, but the wind had increased and was blowing over the open expanse of the course in the high gaunt key of winter. His house, across the road, showed regular cheerful rectangles of orange illumination: he always returned to it with a feeling of relief and pleasant anticipation, but he was very far from sharing Fanny's passionate attachment to their home. Away--on past trips to the Michigan iron ore fields and now on shorter journeys to eastern financial centers--he never thought of it, he was absorbed by business. But in that he wasn't alone, it was true of the majority of successful men he knew over forty; they saw their wives, their homes, they thought of their families, only in the intervals of their tyrannical occupations. He, in reality, was rather better there than most, for he occasionally stayed out at Eastlake to play golf; he was locally interested, active, in the small town of Fanny's birth. Other men--