rried
on--meaningless swears which by their very childishness brought him
back to common sense. His step slowed, he forced himself to be
reasonable. He took a brief against his own unwarranted disturbance of
mind and reduced it to argument. There was nothing at all strange, he
pointed out, in Desire having called at old Bones' office at this, or
any other, time of day (but what under heaven did she do it for?). She
might easily have forgotten to tell the doctor some-thing. (What in
thunder would she have to tell him?) She might have dropped in, in
passing (at that hour of the morning?) merely to ask him over for some
tennis (was the dashed telephone out of order?). Or she might have felt
a trifle seedy (pshaw! her health was perfect--idiot!). Anyway she had
a perfect right to see Dr. Rogers at any time and for any reason she
might choose. (Yes, she had--that was the devil of it!)

At this point of his argument the professor was nearly-run down by a
delivery boy on a bicycle and saved himself only by a sharp collision
with a telegraph pole. This served to clear his brain somewhat. His
confusion of thought dropped away. He began to look his revelation in
the face--

"Desire--John?"

It was certainly possible! Why had he never seen it before? ... He
had been warned. John himself had warned him--Old John who had been so
palpably "hit" when he had first seen Desire at Friendly Bay. But he,
Benis Spence, had laughed. Honestly laughed. No possibility of this
possibility had troubled him. He simply had not seen it. And now--he
saw. The thing italicised itself on his brain.

Granted that Desire might love, there was no reason on earth why she
should not love John.

The conclusion seemed childishly simple and yet he had never seriously
considered it. Why? Relentlessly he forced himself to answer why. It
was because he had believed that when Desire woke to love, if she
should so wake, she would wake to love for him! He tore this admission
out of a shrinking heart and laughed at it. It was funny, quite funny
in its ridiculous conceit.... But it hadn't been conceit, it had
been assurance. Impossible to account for, and absurd as it seemed now,
it was some-thing higher than vanity which had hidden in his heart that
happy sense of kinship with Desire which had made John's warning seem
an emptiness of words.

It was gone now, that wonderful sense of "belonging," swept away in the
swift rush of startled doubt. Searching as it mi