"Wouldn't Florence and Gardner buzz!" she thought with a smile.
"And if they buzzed at the divorce, what WOULDN'T they say if I
really did remarry? But the worst of it is"--and Rachael reaching
for The Way of All Flesh sighed wearily--"the worst of it is that
one never DOES carry out plans, or I never do, any more. I used
to feel equal to any situation, now I don't--getting old, perhaps.
I wonder"--she stared dreamily at the soft shadows in the big
room--"I wonder if things are as queer to most people as they are
to me? I don't get much joy out of life, as it is, and yet I don't
DARE cut loose and go away. No maid, no club, living at some cheap
hotel--no, I couldn't do that! I wish there was someone who could
advise me--some disinterested person, someone who--well, who loved
me, and who knew that I've always tried to be decent, always tried
to play the game. All I want is to be reasonably well treated; to
have a good time and be among pleasant people--"

Her thoughts wandered about among the various friends whose
judgment might serve at this crisis to clear her own thoughts and
simplify the road before her. Strangely enough, Warren Gregory's
own mother was the first of whom she thought; that pure and
austere and uncompromising heart would certainly find the way.
Whether Rachael had the courage to follow it was another question.
She loved old Mrs. Gregory; they were good friends. But Rachael
dismissed her with a little shudder, as from the spatter of icy
water against her bared breast. The bishop? Rachael and Clarence
duly kept a pew in one of the city's fashionable churches; it was
the Breckenridge family pew, rented by the family for a hundred
years. But they never sat in it, although Rachael felt vaguely
sometimes that for reasons undefined they should, and Clarence was
apt in moments of sentiment to reproach his wife with the
statement that his grandmother had been a faithful church woman,
and his mother had always attended church on pleasant mornings in
winter.