nt to _attempt_ to escape," Starratt used to explain.
"We want to _do_ it!"

"But, spring!" Monet would echo. "That means May at the earliest. The
mountain passes will be impossible even in April. Let's try!"

"Come, come! Why this sudden restlessness? I thought your music would
be a solace. But it seems to have made you dissatisfied. I can't
understand it."

"We live by desire! I am happy only when I am burning! When the flame
is out there are only ashes."

Fred yielded finally to the extent of starting plans. Food was the
first consideration. Monet was still in the dining room at Ward 6.
About the first of November he began hoarding sugar and rice. A hollow
tree in an obscure corner of the grounds back of the barns was the
hiding place. Everyday a little more was added to the store. The
process communicated a feeling of extraordinary interest to them both.
Around this almost trivial circumstance whirled the shadows of
infinite romance. Escape! At last these two men had a goal ... they
were no longer drifting.

Once a week Fred continued to receive two letters--one from his wife
and one from Ginger. It was curious to compare them--reading an
ironical comedy between the lines ... creating the scenes that were
being enacted by the triangle of women in front of the Hilmer dwelling
every day in the early morning sunshine. For, as time went on, it
appeared that Ginger walked through her inscrutable part with
irritating fidelity--that is, irritating to Helen Starratt. It could
not be otherwise, Fred decided, remembering the look of cool contempt
which his wife had thrown at Ginger's departing figure on the day of
their last interview. He saw Mrs. Hilmer only vaguely, in a
half-light, and yet out of the fragmentary sentences he got a sense of
something patient and brooding and terrible waiting an appointed
season. She seemed to be sitting back like some veiled and mystic
chorus, watching the duel of the other two and somehow shaping it to
her passive purpose.

And where was Hilmer in it all? Somehow, in spite of his masculine
virility, he seemed to have no place nor footing upon the narrow ledge
of feminine subtleties. No doubt, as usual, he was proceeding in his
direct and complacent line, unaware of anything save the brutally
obvious... Perhaps only the brutally obvious had any existence,
perhaps Fred Starratt was spinning fantasies out of threads which came
to his hand. He did not know, he could not say, but in the