to say just a word about him."

"Say on, precious."

"Well--did you ever see a man so fond of men?"

"Oh, of course he is, or men wouldn't be so fond of him."

"_I_ think he's fonder of men than of women!"

Constance smiled: "Do you?"

"And I think," persisted Anna, "the reason some women find him so
agreeable is that our collective society is all he asks of us, or ever
will ask."

"Nan Callender, look me in the eye! You can't! My little sister, you've
got a lot more sense than I have, and you know it, but I can tell you
one thing. When Steve and I--"

"Oh, Connie, dear--nothing--go on."

"I won't! Except to say some lovers take love easy and some--can't. I
must go back to Charlie. I know, Nan, it's those who love hardest that
take love hardest, and I suppose it's born in Hilary Kincaid, and it's
born in you, to fight it as you'd fight fire. But, oh, in these strange
times, don't do it! Don't do it. You're going to have trouble a-plenty
without."

The pair, moving to the door with hands on each other's shoulders,
exchanged a melting gaze. "Trouble a-plenty," softly asked Anna, "why do
you--?"

"Oh, why, why, why!" cried the other, with a sudden gleam of tears. "I
wish you and Miranda had never learned that word."

XVIII

FLORA TELLS THE TRUTH!

You ask how the Valcour ladies, living outwardly so like the most of us
who are neither scamps nor saints, could live by moral standards so
different from those we have always thought essential to serenity of
brow, sweetness of bloom or blitheness of companionship, and yet could
live so prettily--remain so winsome and unscarred.

Well, neither of them had ever morally _fallen_ enough even to fret the
brow. It is the fall that disfigures. They had lived up to inherited
principles (such as they were), and one of the minor of these was, to
adapt their contours to whatever they impinged upon.

We covet solidity of character, but Flora and Madame were essentially
fluid. They never let themselves clash with any one, and their private
rufflings of each other had only a happy effect of aerating their
depths, and left them as mirror-smooth and thoroughly one as the bosom
of a garden lake after the ripples have died behind two jostling swans.
To the Callenders society was a delightful and sufficient end. To the
Valcours it was a means to all kinds of ends, as truly as commerce or
the industries, and yet they were so fragrantly likable that to call
them accomp