, a flash of
interest in her eyes. It was to grow into genuine enthusiasm. The impulse
at the back of her mind was to develop into an idea, later into a strong,
definite purpose. It had for its foundation a hitherto unsuspected desire
to do good.

"Great Scot, no!"

"Then _try_, George," she cried, a new thrill in her voice.

He was bewildered. "Try what?"

"I would stake my life on it, George, if you set about it in the right way
you can win Lutie all over again. All you have to do is to let her see
that you are a man, a real man. There's no reason in the world why she
shouldn't remember what love really is, and that she once had it through
you. There's a lot in love that doesn't come out in a couple of months and
she has the sense to know that she was cheated out of it. If I am not
greatly mistaken she is just like all other women. We don't stop loving
before we get our fill of it, or until we've at least found out that it
bores us to be loved by the man who starts the fire going. Now, Lutie must
realise that she never got her full share. She wasn't through loving you.
She had barely begun. It doesn't matter how badly a woman is treated, she
goes on loving her man until some other man proves that she is wrong, and
he cannot prove it to her until she has had all of the love that she can
get out of the first man. That's why women stick to the men who beat them.
Of course, this doesn't apply to unmoral women. You know the kind I mean.
But it is true of all honest women, and Lutie appears to be more honest
than we suspected. She had two or three months of you, George, and then
came the crash. You can't tell me that she stopped wanting to be loved by
you just as she was loving you the hardest. She may some day marry another
man, but she will never forget that she had you for three months and that
they were not enough."

"Great Scot!" said George once more, staring open-mouthed at his
incomprehensible sister. "Are you in earnest?"

"Certainly."

"Why, she ought to despise me."

"Quite true, she should," said Anne coolly. "The only thing that keeps her
from despising you is that uncompleted honeymoon. It's like giving a
starving man just half enough to eat. He is still hungry."

"Do you mean to say that you'd like to see me make it up again with Lutie?
You'd like to have me marry her again?"

"Why not? I'd find some happiness in seeing you happy, I suppose. I dare
say it is self interest on my part, after all. In