think there were times when she tried desperately to call it back into her keeping, for the heart of Mary was a prize that was coveted by more men than one; but Phil's it was in the beginning and Phil's it stubbornly remained.
How or where Phil came under the spell of Sari Threnow's shoal-green eyes, I don't know. There was something terrible and at the same time infinitely pathetic about his passion for her; it worried and tore at him like a vindictive live creature determined to leave him neither mental peace nor surcease from bodily longing. She was lovely to look at, but there was an intangible something about her beauty that I hated. I never looked at her without crushing down an itching, maniacal desire to twist her long yellow hair about her pale throat and. . .
I am not naturally subject to homicidal seizures either, I assure you! At the time, I was heartily ashamed of that desire. Later, I cursed myself sick for throttling it.
Her mode of dress was so startling that it deserves mention. Always she was garbed in silvery, shimmering, exquisite stuffs, fashioned with an odd pointed effect trailing in back, and her only ornaments were strands of pearls that vied with her skin in whiteness. When she and Phil were together, the presence of others was seemingly regarded as a nuisance to be escaped as quickly and expeditiously as possible. When Phil was busy, she came often to see my wife, Nancy, and two vertical lines of worry etched between Nancy's eyes were the invariable sequels to her visits. Now Nancy has no kinship with the damp, lachrymose type of female who drips tears merely for the pleasure she derives thereby, and when I came home one evening and found her crying, the incident left me unpleasantly shaken.
"Don't mind me, Bob," she said, dabbing at her eyes and attempting a watery smile. "Sari Threnow just left. There is something about that woman that puzzles and frightens me. It isn't anything she says, because she never says anything at all—just sits and watches me. Oh, you can't imagine! My tiniest move never escapes her weird green eyes. She is absorbingly interested in the way I wash my dishes, sweep my house, comb my hair and darn your socks. She behaves like a visitor from another planet, who, ignorant of the ways of women, tries to learn by heart the things that women do. Oh, I know what I'm saying sounds ridiculous! And more ridiculous still is my creepy feeling of certainty that she wants something, wants it so terribly she would move heaven itself to gain it. It isn't love and it isn't money or any of the things a normal womancraves—it's something incredible—something she is working night and day to take away from Phil. It frightens me."
My bland demeanor was far from being a true index to my feelings, for I recalled with a shiver of disgust the emotions that a sight of Sari Threnow never failed to evoke in me.
"You're letting your imagination run away with you, dear," I soothed. "If she's after anything poor old Phil could give, he’d hand it over and be pathetically grateful to her for taking it.
"A material something, yes. But it isn't a question of that."
Nancy's quiet conviction silenced the protest that rose to my lips.
"Do you think she loves Phil?" I asked after an uneasy pause.
My wife made a surprizing answer.
"I think she tries, but she doesn't know how."
"Fiddlesticks!" I replied. "I'm going to see Phil tomorrow and tell him that her visits here must come to an end."
But I never did.
