"Marriage isn't a cage, exactly." "You just aren't entirely out, yet." "At least there is comfort in finding that other women want the same thing I want, and get it." But marriage wasn't a cage, she thought, later. She found herself not so much imprisoned as bewildered. It's more like a labyrinth. There are ways out, if you can find them. Out, not of marriage itself, but out of the thing people have made of it--for women. Catherine knew, when she approached her mother with her plan, that she had need of perspective and assurance. But Mrs. Spencer's comment was brief. "I suppose," she said, "you must work this out for yourself. Yes, I can stay nights at your house. Alethea will be away all of February." "Then it's really a good scheme for you, too?" Catherine begged. "I'm a little too old to sit up with a croupy child." "Letty's too old for croup." Catherine refused to look at her mother's implication--that her children might be sick, might need her. "Of course, Miss Kelly and Mrs. O'Lay together can manage the household. There won't be any burden for you. I thought you could have Spencer's room, and he could have my bed." She and Charles seemed to run on tangents which seldom crossed. A young assistant in Charles's department had influenza, and in the handling of his work, Charles came in for an evening class. Frequent committee meetings, clinic affairs, kept him away on other evenings. Catherine would wake, to hear his cautious blunderings in the dark. He assumed that she slept, and she, fumbling for some noncommittal phrase of greeting, often lay quite still, not speaking. One mild, sunny day toward the end of January, Catherine came up from town on top of a bus. A little windblown and stiff, she hurried across the campus. In the dim tunnel behind the gymnasium she met Stella Partridge. "Mrs. Hammond!" Stella halted just where the light through glass panels in a door made a charming picture of her pale face and close, dark furs. "It's been so long since we have seen each other, and I wanted to congratulate you on your--it is a promotion, isn't it? Dr. Hammond is so proud of you." Catherine's first thought was a flash of resentment that she had worn her shabby coat that morning, instead of the elegance Margaret had selected for her. How childish! she rebuked herself, as she said, "Thank you. It isn't really a promotion. Just a different phase of the work." "It will be so nice for you, having the change." She wants to detain me, to talk--Catherine found a myriad tiny buzzing thoughts, just out of reach--to show me that she knows all about it, from Charles. "I am sure I shall enjoy it." She bent forward, her words suddenly out of her volition. "What a charming hand bag!" Her finger hovered above it; her eyes, swooping up to the cool dark eyes, were derisive.