The supper at the White Springs Hotel had not been the last supper Carlotta
Harrison and Max Wilson had taken together. Carlotta had selected for her
vacation a small town within easy motoring distance of the city, and two or
three times during her two weeks off duty Wilson had gone out to see her.
He liked being with her. She stimulated him. For once that he could see
Sidney, he saw Carlotta twice.

She had kept the affair well in hand. She was playing for high stakes.
She knew quite well the kind of man with whom she was dealing--that he
would pay as little as possible. But she knew, too, that, let him want a
thing enough, he would pay any price for it, even marriage.

She was very skillful. The very ardor in her face was in her favor.
Behind her hot eyes lurked cold calculation. She would put the thing
through, and show those puling nurses, with their pious eyes and evening
prayers, a thing or two.

During that entire vacation he never saw her in anything more elaborate
than the simplest of white dresses modestly open at the throat, sleeves
rolled up to show her satiny arms. There were no other boarders at the
little farmhouse. She sat for hours in the summer evenings in the square
yard filled with apple trees that bordered the highway, carefully posed
over a book, but with her keen eyes always on the road. She read Browning,
Emerson, Swinburne. Once he found her with a book that she hastily
concealed. He insisted on seeing it, and secured it. It was a book on
brain surgery. Confronted with it, she blushed and dropped her eyes.