There was protection in numbers, and numbers seldom failed beneath
Medora Phillips' roof. They failed this time, however. Mrs. Phillips and
Hortense were away at a reading; only Amy and Carolyn were at home. Cope
seized on Carolyn as at a straw. He thanked her warmly again for her
halting offices in the matter of that last song, and he begged that he
might hear some of her recent verse. His appeal was vehement, almost
boisterous: Carolyn, surprised, felt that he was ready at last to grant her
a definite personality.
Amy tried in vain to remove Carolyn from the board. But Carolyn, like
Hortense, had finally joined the ranks of the "recognized"; she was
determined (being still ignorant, Cope was glad to see, regarding Amy's
claims) to make this recognition so marked as to last beyond the moment.
She played a little--not well. She read. She even accompanied Amy to the
door at the close of Cope's short stay. He shook hands with them both. He
had decided that he would do no more than this with Amy, in any event, and
Carolyn's presence made his predetermined course easy, even obligatory. Yet
he went out into the night feeling, somehow, that he had acted solely on
his resolution and that he might consider himself a man of some
decisiveness, after all.
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