bear us out in so doing. For on that
morning, with all facts of the situation freshly in her mind, she went
down-town to Dr. Rogers' office for no other purpose than to see and
talk to Dr. Rogers' yellow-haired nurse.

"When I see her and hear her," said Desire to her-self, "I shall know.
And it will be so comfortable to know." Never a word, mind you, about
the inconsistency of being uncomfortable through not knowing.

No attempt at reminding herself that knowledge was none of her
business. No arguing out of the matter at all. Merely the following of
a blind impulse to find Mary if Mary were to be found.

This impulse, which was wholly foreign to her natural habit of mind,
she justified to herself under the guise of "natural curiosity." All
she had to do was to make the call seem sufficiently casual and to time
her arrival at the doctor's office at an hour when he could not
possibly be in it. As a newcomer, such a mistake would seem quite
plausible and could be passed over easily with "How stupid of me! I
should have known." After that the nurse would probably invite her to
wait. And, even if she did not, the mere exchange of question and
answer would probably be sufficiently revealing.

This small program proceeded exactly as planned and Desire, in her most
becoming frock, learned of the absence of Dr. Rogers with exactly the
right degree of impatience and regret.

"Please come in," said Dr. Rogers' nurse in somewhat drawling accents.
"Doctor may be back any minute." Being a nurse she always predicted the
doctor's arrival no matter how certain she might be that he would not
arrive.

Desire hesitated, glanced quite naturally at her watch and decided to
wait. "If you are sure the doctor won't be long--?" The nurse was sure
that he wouldn't be long.

Here her interest in the caller seemed to cease and she became very
much occupied with a business-like addressing of envelopes at a desk in
the corner.

Desire looked around the cool and pleasant room. It was not like her
idea of a doctor's office, save perhaps for a faint clean smell of
drugs. There were comfortable chairs, flowers in a window-box, a table
with a book or two and some magazines. Through a half-open door, an
inner office showed--all very different from the picture her memory
showed her of the musty, cumbered room in which her father had received
his dwindling patients. As a child she had hated that room, hated the
hideous charts of "people with their