Fortune's Hand by Belva Plain Read Free Book Online

which traveled to those large green eyes, sea green, leaf green, and rare. Feeling a strange tension, he lowered his gaze to the table where her arm lay. She wore a bright gold bracelet with a lion’s head that reminded him of illustrations he had seen in a textbook of ancient history.
    â€œYes, I bought it in Greece. On my junior year abroad I studied in England, but we had vacations and got to see other places. It was wonderful.”
    How Lily would savor all those foreign marvels! On her behalf he felt a sting of resentment.
    â€œI know I’ve been very lucky,” Ellen said. “Sometimes I wonder whether I deserve everything I have had.”
    â€œYou’ve lived in a different world from mine,” he remarked abruptly.
    â€œIn what way?”
    â€œFor instance, I’ve seldom been outside the state.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter. Your mind has.”
    Then, ashamed to have said something that sounded like a complaint, he amended it. “I’m not complaining.”
    â€œTell me about yourself, about the farm. You do come from a farm, don’t you?”
    â€œYes. How did you guess?”
    She was amused. “Not from any hayseeds on you. I just felt it.”
    â€œThat’s funny. The first time I saw you, I felt that you were an artist.”
    â€œFeelings. We try to govern our lives by our intellect, and we think we do, but the truth is that we always act on our feelings.”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said slowly.
    â€œTell me about the farm.”
    There wasn’t much to tell but scraps of memory: the daily routine, the animals, the passing seasons, the affection for the small piece of land on which he had been born.
    â€œYou tell about it as a poet would,” she said. “You make me think of Robert Frost, the woods and the little horse. Remember?”
    He did. Frost was one of Lily’s favorites, too.
    They got up and went outside. The sun had gone behind the clouds, and it was cooler.
    â€œShall we take a walk?” she asked. “To the park and back? Shall we?”
    They walked slowly, stopping at windows on the way to look at Persian kittens in a pet shop, and travel posters, and books. They stopped on the sidewalk in front of a church to watch a bridal couple, cameras and a scatter of rice.
    â€œIt’s funny about men,” Ellen said. “Look at you. Not a tear.”
    Not a tear, he thought, but a pang that bewildered him, thinking of Lily and all her plans. Why should I be feeling a pang? he asked himself, and promptly answered:Because you want everything to go right for her—which it will, Robb, you fool, which it will, for her and for you.
    In the park they paused at the war memorial. Two soldiers stood, one with his arms around the wounded other. For a minute or more they were silent before it.
    â€œIn Canada once,” Ellen said, “there was a memorial with an inscription that I have never forgotten. ‘Is it nothing to you?’ it said. The words pierced me, ‘Is it nothing to you?’ ”
    Robb nodded. “Moving words. Exactly right.”
    â€œSimple language. It always goes farther.”
    We have the same reactions, he thought, and was instantly angry. What if we do? A hundred thousand women in this state alone must have the same. What is the difference between this one and any of them? None. None.
    A silence fell. They walked on through the quiet air, through the stillness that comes before rain, when the breeze dies and birds hide. The pond swarmed with ducks.
    â€œCome down from the north,” Ellen said. “It must be getting cold up there.”
    â€œYes.”
    He was looking not at the ducks but at her, the boyish head and hips, the long legs and female breasts under the silk shirt. It was only a body, a woman’s shape that any normal man would admire.
    â€œLook at the black cloud,” he said. “We’d better go back. Run for the