Don't wonder at what?"

"That you said a few things to him, too. You've got a valid grievance, it
seems to me. You couldn't be blamed for quarreling with him over it as
bitterly as possible."

She barely heeded the words. They never did mean much to Paula. But his
look and his tone reached her, and stung.

"Look here!" she said with sudden intensity. "Before we go any farther, I
want to know this. Did Mary really need John, yesterday?"

She saw him turn pale and she had to wait two or three long breaths for
her answer. But it came evenly enough at last.

"I happened to turn up instead. And she's perfectly all right, to-day."

Her eyes filled with tears. She turned forlornly away from him and
dropped down upon a settee. "You hate me, too, now, I suppose. As
well as he."

He sat down beside her and laid a hand upon her shoulder. "My dear," he
said--and his own voice had a break of tenderness in it,--"I couldn't
hate any one to-day if I wanted to. And I never could want to hate you.
If there's anything I can do to help with John Wollaston.... But you see,
if you want to keep your grievance you don't need any help. Nobody can
take it away from you. It's only if you want to get rid of it--because
it's making you beastly unhappy, no matter how valid it is--that you need
any help from me or any one else. If that's what you want, I'll take a
shot at writing you a prescription."

"Go crawling back to him on my knees, I suppose," she said in a tone not
quite so genuinely resentful as she felt it ought to be. "And ask him to
forgive me. What's the good of that when he doesn't love me?--Oh, of
course I know he does--in a way."

His hand dropped absently from her shoulder. After a thoughtful moment he
sprang up and took a turn of the room. "Do you know," he said, halting
before her, "'in a way' is the only way there is. The only way any two
people ever do love each other. That's what makes half the trouble, I
believe. Trying to define it as if it were a standard thing. Like
sterling silver; so many and so many hundredths per cent. pure. Love's
whatever the personal emotion is that draws two people together. It may
be anything. It may make them kind to each other, or it may make them nag
each other into the mad-house, or it may make them shoot each other dead.
It's probably never exactly the same thing between any two pairs of
people..."

"Don't talk nonsense," she said petulantly.

"I'm not a bit sure it's nonsense," he