Mr. Farley was restless. "Your mother is right. We must give Mr. and Mrs. Price a royal welcome tomorrow. We must put ourselves in their place. There are two sides to everything and it takes a great deal of determination to make the first overture. They've done that. Now it's up to us." Mr. Farley was always afraid that the incipient quarrel between Alice and her mother would develop plainer proportions. He did not see the group about him clearly, but a helpless smile was on his face. In terror of their unkindliness he showed them how noble he was. There was another silence. Mrs. Farley could not bear it. "Has Mr. Ridge decided when he will leave for Europe, Alice?" Mrs. Farley's knife and fork in her weak hands clattered against her plate. Alice was silent a moment. "He won't leave before next month," she said. She was very intent on her food. A flush went across her forehead like a burn half under her stringy brown hair. Laurence gave her a quick half-pleased glance of involuntary inquiry. Winnie stared at her with soft sharpness. "Does the doctor think his eyes will get well?" Mr. Farley asked, too clouded with his own concerns to be aware of the tension in Alice's face. "He hopes so. It is nervous strain and overwork mostly. There was some sort of infection, but that came as a result." "Then you'll have a vacation. He can't take you to Europe." "No," Alice said almost angrily. "I know where I can get green things cheap, Mamma. That market on Smith Street." "I see where Ridge has been attacked by all his radical friends. He seems to have most of the world down on him for that last book." Alice would not see Laurence's sneer. "He's too good for all of them," she said sharply. Winnie pursed her mouth. It was an effort not to laugh. To see Alice show feeling for a man like Ridge made one hysterical. Mr. Farley was not thinking of Alice or of Horace Ridge. Again and again, as if in spite of himself, he allowed his gaze to rest on Winnie. His daughter-in-law disturbed him and if he could avoid it he never looked her in the eye. If he could keep from noticing the throats and breasts and arms of women he was usually all right. Then if he were obliged to see them clearly he wanted to weep with the pain of it and when tears again blurred his vision he was relieved. Marriage had been a failure. There had been, he felt, terrible things in his life. Sex had invariably placed him in the wrong, so sex must be the expression of a perverse impulse. Tainted, as he considered it, like other men, he struggled to exalt himself into a vagueness in which particular women did not exist. Winnie despised him, but she would not admit it to herself. "I'm so glad to see you better! So glad!" Mr. Farley repeated irrelevantly, uncomfortable because he felt the sweetness of Winnie's face too intimately.