persisted. "I only just thought of
it, but I believe I've got on to something. Well, if I'm right, then the
problem is to adjust that emotion to your life, or your life to that
emotion, in such a way that the thing will work. There aren't any rules.
There can't be any. It's a matter of--well, that's the word--adjustment."

She could not see that this was helping her much. It was not at all the
line she'd projected for him. Yet she was finding it hard not to feel
less tragic. She had even caught herself, just now, upon the brink of
being amused. "Wait till you've tried to adjust something, as you say,
with John, and have had him tell you what you think until you believe
you do. When he's really being perfectly unreasonable all the while."

"Of course," March observed with the air of one making a material
concession, "he is a good bit of a prima donna himself."

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded. And then, petulantly, she
accused him of laughing at her, of refusing to take her seriously, of
trying to be clever like the Wollastons.

"Look here, Paula," he said, and he put so much edge into his tone that
she did, "have you ever spent five minutes out of the last five years
trying to think what John was, besides your husband? I don't believe it.
When I spoke of him to you, months ago, as a famous person you didn't
know what I was talking about. He is. He's got a better chance--say to
get into the next edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, than you
have. He's got a career. He had it long before he knew you existed.--How
old was he when he came to Vienna? About fifty, wasn't he?"

"Forty-nine," she said with the air of one making a serious
contradiction; but her, "Oh, well,--" and a little laugh that followed it
conceded that it was not.

"He'd had a career then for a long time," March went on. "He was
established. He had things about as he wanted them. And then, out of
nowhere, an irresistible thing like you came along and torpedoed him. He
must have realized that he had gone clean out of his head about you. A
man of that age doesn't fall in love unconsciously, nor easily either. He
must have had frightful misgivings about persuading you to marry him. On
your account as well as his own. Because he is that, you know.
Conscientious, I mean. Almost to a morbid degree."

"Oh, yes," she conceded, "they're both like that. They spend half their
time working things out trying to be fair."

He gave her a quick loo