Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ She hesitated, and Clare slipped an arm through hers.
“You don't know, then, do you? Sometimes I think every one must know. And I don't care. I've reached that point.”
Her confession, naïve and shameless, and yet somehow not without a certain dignity, flowed on. She was mad about Doctor Dick Livingstone. Goodness knew why, for he never looked at her. She might be the dirt under his feet for all he knew. She trembled when she met him in the street, and sometimes he looked past her and never saw her. She didn't sleep well any more.
Elizabeth listened in great discomfort. ”

“ Ask Elizabeth Wheeler. I don't think Lucy here expects to be the only woman in your life.”
Dick stared into the windshield.
“I've been wondering about that, David,” he said, “just how much right——”
“Balderdash!” David snorted. “Don't get any fool notion in your head.”
Followed a short silence with Dick driving automatically and thinking. Finally he drew a long breath.
“All right,” he said, “how about that golf—you need exercise. You're putting on weight, and you know it. And you smoke too much. It's either less tobacco or more walking, and you ought to know it.” ”

“ Because it is a solemn matter to take a number of people who have been up to that moment engrossed in thoughts of food or golf or servants or business, and in the twinkling of an eye, as the prayer book said about death, turn their minds to worship. ”

“ Generally speaking, they centered about some one who resembled Dick Livingstone, but who did not, as did Doctor Livingstone, assume at times an air of frightful maturity and pretend that in years gone by he had dandled her on his knee.
“Sometimes I think he positively avoids me,” Clare wailed. “There's the house, Elizabeth. Do you mind stopping a moment? He must be in his office now. The light's burning.” ”

“ But the behavior of this pew was very erratic. Sometimes an elderly and portly gentleman with white hair and fierce eyebrows would come in when the sermon was almost over. Again, a hand would reach through the grill behind it, and a tall young man who had had his eyes fixed in the proper direction, but not always on the rector, would reach for his hat, get up and slip out. On these occasions, however, he would first identify the owner of the hand and then bend over the one permanent occupant of the pew, a little old lady. ”