es
to the Doctor's face. But he did lift them and he lifted them very
squarely and steadily.

"Yes, I think I did--love Cornelia," he acknowledged frankly. "The
very first time that I saw her I said to myself. 'Here is the end of
my journey,' but I seem to have found out suddenly that the mere fact
of loving a woman does not necessarily prove her that much coveted
'journey's end.' I don't know exactly how to express it, indeed I feel
beastly clumsy about expressing it, but somehow it seems as though it
were Cornelia herself who had proved herself, perfectly amiably, no
'journey's end' after all, but only a way station not equipped to
receive my particular kind of a permanent guest. It isn't that I
wanted any grand fixings. Oh, can't you understand that I'm not
finding any fault with Cornelia. There never was any slightest
pretence about Cornelia. She never, never even in the first place,
made any possible effort to attract me. Can't you see that Cornelia
_looks_ to me to-day exactly the way that she looked to me in the
first place; very, amazingly, beautiful. But a traveler, you know,
cannot dally indefinitely to feed his eyes on even the most wonderful
view while all his precious lifelong companions,--his whims, his
hobbies, his cravings, his yearnings,--are crouching starved and
unwelcome outside the door.

"And I can't even flatter myself," he added wryly; "I can't even
flatter myself that my--going is going to inconvenience Cornelia in
the slightest; because I can't see that my coming has made even the
remotest perceptible difference in her daily routine. Anyway--" he
finished more lightly, "when you come right down to 'mating', or
'homing', or 'belonging', or whatever you choose to call it, it seems
to be written in the stars that plans or no plans, preferences or no
preferences, initiatives or no initiatives, we belong to those--and
to those only, hang it all!--who happen to love _us_ most!"

Fairly jumping from his chair the Doctor snatched hold of Stanton's
shoulder.

"Who happen to love _us_ most?" he repeated wildly. "Love _us_? _us_?
For heaven's sake, who's loving you _now_?"

Utterly irrelevantly, Stanton brushed him aside, and began to rummage
anxiously among the books on his table.

"Do you know much about Vermont?" he asked suddenly. "It's funny, but
almost nobody seems to know anything about Vermont. It's a darned good
state, too, and I can't imagine why all the geographies neglect it
so." Idly