like--a dream
you'd go through again. No; you wouldn't go through it again--it would
kill you." She grew incoherent. "Oh, I don't know--I don't know. It's
gone--just gone. I don't say it wasn't real. It _was_ real. It was a
kind of frenzy. It got hold of me. It got hold of me body and soul. I
couldn't think of anything else--while it lasted."

Lois was pained. "Oh, but, Rosie, love can't come and go like that."

"Can't it? Then it wasn't love." But she contradicted herself again.
"Yes, it _was_ love. It was love--while it lasted."

While it lasted! While it lasted! The phrase seemed to be on every one's
lips. There was distress in Lois's voice as she said, "But if it was
love, Rosie, it ought to have lasted."

And Rosie seemed to agree with her. "Yes, it ought to have. But it
didn't. It went away. No, it didn't go away; it just--it
just--_wasn't_." She wrung her hands, struggling with the difficulty she
found in explaining herself. "After that day at Duck Rock it was
like--it was like the breaking of a spell that was on me. Everything was
different. It was like seeing through plain daylight again after looking
through colored glass. I didn't want the things I'd been wanting. They
were foolish to me--I _saw_ they were foolish--and--and impossible. But
it wasn't as if they had died; it was as if I had--and come back."

It was on behalf of love that Lois felt driven to make a protest. "And
yet, Rosie, if you were to see Claude again--"

"No, no, no," the girl cried, excitedly; "I don't want to see him. He
needn't stay away--not on my account--but I sha'n't see him if I can
help it. It would be like dying the second time. All the same, he
needn't be afraid of me; and his family needn't be afraid of me. I want
to--to forget them all."

Enlightenment came slowly to Lois because of her unwillingness to be
convinced of the heart's capriciousness. That love could be likened to
brain-storm--obsession--the tornado whose rage dies out in an
afternoon--was a wound to her tenderest beliefs. That the natural man
must be taken into consideration as well as the spiritual also did
violence to what she would have liked to make a serene, smooth theory of
life. She stood looking long at the girl, studying her subconsciously,
before she was able to say, calmly: "Very well, Rosie, dear. I'll let
Claude know. I can get his address, and I'll write to him."

But another surprise was in store for her. She was near the door leading
from