work had been thrust upon Dory. Part of it was a study of the
great American universities, and that meant long absences from home. All
of it was of the kind that must be done at once or not at all--and Work
is the one mistress who, if she be enamored enough of a man to resolve
to have him and no other, can compel him, whether he be enamored of her
or not. However, for the beginning of the artificial relation between
this engaged couple, the chief cause was not his work but his attitude
toward her, his not unnatural but highly unwise regard for the peculiar
circumstances in which they had become engaged. Respect for the real
feelings of others is all very well, if not carried too far; but respect
for the purely imaginary feelings of others simply encourages them to
plunge deeper into the fogs and bogs of folly. There was excuse for
Dory's withholding from his love affair the strong and firm hand he laid
upon all his other affairs; but it cannot be denied that he deserved what
he got, or, rather, that he failed to deserve what he did not get. And
the irony of it was that his unselfishness was chiefly to blame; for a
selfish man would have gone straight at Del and, with Dory's advantages,
would have captured her forthwith.

As it was, she drifted aimlessly through day after day, keeping close at
home, interested in nothing. She answered briefly or not at all the
letters from her old friends, and she noted with a certain blunted
bitterness how their importunities fainted and died away, as the news of
the change in her fortunes got round. If she had been seeing them face to
face every day, or if she had been persistent and tenacious, they would
have extricated themselves less abruptly; for not the least important
among the sacred "appearances" of conventionality is the "appearance" of
good-heartedness; it is the graceful cloak for that icy selfishness which
is as inevitable among the sheltered and pampered as sympathy and
helpfulness are among those naked to the joys and sorrows of real life.
Adelaide was far from her friends, and she deliberately gave them every
opportunity to abandon and to forget her without qualms or fears of
"appearing" mean and snobbish. There were two girls from whom she rather
hoped for signs of real friendship. She had sought them in the first
place because they were "of the right sort," but she had come to like
them for themselves and she believed they liked her for herself. And so
they did; but th