Yet she was learning from Della. Learning the strangest things from Della’s pragmatic little soul. Walter was always asking her to come to see them, to join them here and there and it was so good to be wanted that Cecily saw the young Warners often. At first the demonstrations of affection she used to witness bothered her, shamed her delicacies. But she grew used to them and quite tolerant. One couldn’t do away with Dellas. Why shouldn’t she kiss her husband in public if she liked? What difference did it make? They cared for each other and when Della would pout and grow angry and Walter get angry in return, Cecily grew used to seeing them, for no reason at all, give up the quarrel in favor of a caress. No long silences, no quiet bitternesses. No one made his point in these little quarrels, but what did that matter either? They weren’t points worth making. Cecily had noted through the papers the return of Fliss for those few days. It had been evidently quite a social triumph. The entertaining for her had been very quiet in deference to Fliss’s mourning. Cecily heard that with a quick, ironic memory of the day she had visited Fliss’s mother. Once she spoke of Fliss to Ellen. “Your cousin has become very important.” “She was always a hard worker,” returned Ellen. Cecily looked at her skeptically. “Oh, yes, in her way. She’s really a very hard worker. Of course she likes things pretty and gay, but I will say this for her. She was always willing to work for what she got. And she knew what she wanted from the time she was a little thing.” But Cecily felt no tolerance there--no tolerance towards Fliss. Fliss was to her the waste of the world--the corruption of the times--with whom there must be no truce.