and Del were now trying to make themselves believe against the almost
hopeless handicap of the unbelief they had acquired as part of their
"Eastern culture." He went on: "There's one redeeming feature of the--the
situation."

"Only one?"

"And that for you," he said. "At least, _you've_ got a small income."

"But I haven't," she replied. "Dory made me turn it over to mother."

Arthur stared. "Dory!"

"Yes," she answered, with a nod and a smile. It would have given Dory a
surprise, a vastly different notion as to what she thought of him, had he
seen her unawares just then.

"_Made_ you?"

"Made," she repeated.

"And you did it?"

"I've promised I will."

"Why?"

"I don't just know," was her slow reply.

"Because he was afraid it might make bad blood between you and me?"

"That was one of the reasons he urged," she admitted. "But he thought,
too, it would be bad for him and me."

A long silence. Then Arthur: "Del, I almost think you're not making such
a mistake as I feared, in marrying him."

"So do I--sometimes," was his sister's, to him, astonishing answer, in an
absent, speculative tone.

Arthur withheld the question that was on his lips. He looked curiously at
the small graceful head, barely visible in the deepening twilight. "She's
a strange one," he reflected. "I don't understand her--and I doubt if she
understands herself."

And that last was very near to the truth. Everyone has a reason for
everything he does; but it by no means follows that he always knows
that reason, or even could extricate it from the tangle of motives,
real and reputed, behind any given act. This self-ignorance is less
common among men than among women, with their deliberate training to
self-consciousness and to duplicity; it is most common among those--men
as well as women--who think about themselves chiefly. And Adelaide,
having little to think about when all her thinking was hired out, had of
necessity thought chiefly about herself.

"You guessed that Janet has thrown me over?" Arthur said, to open the way
for relieving his mind.

Adelaide made a gallant effort, and her desire to console him conquered
her vanity. "Just as Ross threw me over," she replied, with a successful
imitation of indifference.

Instead of being astonished at the news, Arthur was astonished at his not
having guessed it. His first sensation was the very human one of
pleasure--the feeling that he had companionship in humiliation. He moved
c