a lot off you, Carrie, but I don't propose for one
second to stand your saying I'm not patriotic. You know mighty well and
good that I've tried to get away and join the army. And at the beginning
of the whole fracas I said--I've said right along--that we ought to have
entered the war the minute Germany invaded Belgium. You don't get me at
all. You can't appreciate a man's work. You're abnormal. You've
fussed so much with these fool novels and books and all this highbrow
junk----You like to argue!"

It ended, a quarter of an hour later, in his calling her a "neurotic"
before he turned away and pretended to sleep.

For the first time they had failed to make peace.

"There are two races of people, only two, and they live side by
side. His calls mine 'neurotic'; mine calls his 'stupid.' We'll never
understand each other, never; and it's madness for us to debate--to lie
together in a hot bed in a creepy room--enemies, yoked."

III

It clarified in her the longing for a place of her own.

"While it's so hot, I think I'll sleep in the spare room," she said next
day.

"Not a bad idea." He was cheerful and kindly.

The room was filled with a lumbering double bed and a cheap pine bureau.
She stored the bed in the attic; replaced it by a cot which, with a
denim cover, made a couch by day; put in a dressing-table, a rocker
transformed by a cretonne cover; had Miles Bjornstam build book-shelves.

Kennicott slowly understood that she meant to keep up her seclusion. In
his queries, "Changing the whole room?" "Putting your books in there?"
she caught his dismay. But it was so easy, once her door was closed, to
shut out his worry. That hurt her--the ease of forgetting him.

Aunt Bessie Smail sleuthed out this anarchy. She yammered, "Why, Carrie,
you ain't going to sleep all alone by yourself? I don't believe in that.
Married folks should have the same room, of course! Don't go getting
silly notions. No telling what a thing like that might lead to. Suppose
I up and told your Uncle Whit that I wanted a room of my own!"

Carol spoke of recipes for corn-pudding.

But from Mrs. Dr. Westlake she drew encouragement. She had made an
afternoon call on Mrs. Westlake. She was for the first time invited
up-stairs, and found the suave old woman sewing in a white and mahogany
room with a small bed.

"Oh, do you have your own royal apartments, and the doctor his?" Carol
hinted.

"Indeed I do! The doctor says it's bad enough to ha