The mood was thinning. Once more she was thinking of David and of the tea that was to be a torture. What did she want of friends? What did she have to give them? How, with no work and no joy in her heart, was she ever to pass through the countless hours of life?... A doctor would have said to Cornelia: “The trouble with you is, you do not eat enough.” Thus this day, when Cornelia was once more in her room, she was too tired to go out again to dine, too bored to cook a dinner for herself. “I’ll eat at tea,” she explained to her sense of unfitness. She brewed herself a cup of coffee. That was easy. She recalled her last Thanksgiving. She and Tom went together to the New Jersey heights above the Hudson River; they dined at a mushroom farm. What a jolly jaunt--only a year ago! The last, she thought, of her excursions with Tom. A silent rule they had had always to spend their holidays together--a rule unbroken for twelve years, broken now by the war between them that broke all things. She sat sipping her coffee, and wandered over the frozen hills where their feet had struck. They pitied David laughingly, that day. As so often on set occasions, he had been gobbled up by the Deanes. The conventional time, they found, for not counting on David was the conventional feast-day. She remembered what Tom said: “These families have so little imagination! They cannot even invite a chap to dinner except on a public holiday.” Cornelia thought now how good it would be to be embraced in some convention: however stiff it was it would be warm to be shut in tight. She had been alone the Christmas of last year. She was not used to it. Christmas was coming again. She made herself a little mound of cushions on her couch and settled with a book. It was a silly novel some one had given her. There, uncut, was the package of books in the corner, which Tom had sent. Something kept her away from them. She was not sure what shafts Tom might thus unsheath and aim at her. She was not suspicious but indifferent. Her mind was torpid. They must be heavy books. She would have to work to understand them.