on't be a secret from you."

"Dearest, you needn't tell me unless you want," Verena went on, thinking
of her own unimparted knowledge.

"I thought it was our plan to divide everything. It was certainly mine."

"Ah, don't talk about plans!" Verena exclaimed, rather ruefully. "You
see, if we _are_ going to stay to-morrow, how foolish it was to have
any. There is more in her letter than is expressed," she added, as Olive
appeared to be studying in her face the reasons for and against making
this concession to Mrs. Burrage, and that was rather embarrassing.

"I thought it over all the evening--so that if now you will consent we
will stay."

"Darling--what a spirit you have got! All through all those dear little
dishes--all through _Lohengrin_! As I haven't thought it over at all,
you must settle it. You know I am not difficult."

"And would you go and stay with Mrs. Burrage, after all, if she should
say anything to me that seems to make it desirable?"

Verena broke into a laugh. "You know it's not our real life!"

Olive said nothing for a moment; then she replied: "Don't think _I_ can
forget that. If I suggest a deviation, it's only because it sometimes
seems to me that perhaps, after all, almost anything is better than the
form reality _may_ take with us." This was slightly obscure, as well as
very melancholy, and Verena was relieved when her companion remarked, in
a moment, "You must think me strangely inconsequent"; for this gave her
a chance to reply, soothingly:

"Why, you don't suppose I expect you to keep always screwed up! I will
stay a week with Mrs. Burrage, or a fortnight, or a month, or anything
you like," she pursued; "anything it may seem to you best to tell her
after you have seen her."

"Do you leave it all to me? You don't give me much help," Olive said.

"Help to what?"

"Help to help _you_."

"I don't want any help; I am quite strong enough!" Verena cried gaily.
The next moment she inquired, in an appeal half comical, half touching,
"My dear colleague, why do you make me say such conceited things?"

"And if you do stay--just even to-morrow--shall you be--very much of the
time--with Mr. Ransom?"

As Verena for the moment appeared ironically-minded, she might have
found a fresh subject for hilarity in the tremulous, tentative tone in
which Olive made this inquiry. But it had not that effect; it produced
the first manifestation of impatience--the first, literally, and the
first note of repr