."

He laughed and rose. "I'll see a specialist. But nobody shall make me
stop writing. Not till I have scribbled 'Finis' to my manuscript."

"It isn't well to defy nature."

"Defiance is better than submission. Nature's a cruel jade. You know
that. In the end she gets us all. That's why I hate the country. It's
there that we see Nature unmasked. I stayed three weeks at a farm last
summer, and from morning to night murder went on. A cat killed a
cardinal, and a blue jay killed a grosbeak. One of the servants shot a
squirrel. And when I walked out one morning to see the sheep, a lamb was
gone and we had a roast with mint sauce for dinner. For lunch we had the
squirrel in a stew. A hawk swept down upon the chickens, and all that
escaped we ate later fried, with cream gravy."

"In most of your instances man was the offender."

"Well, if man didn't kill, something else would. For every lamb there's a
wolf."

"You are looking on only one side of it."

"When you can show me the other I'll believe in it. But not to-day when
you tell me that my sun may be blotted out."

Something in his voice made the young doctor lay his hand on his shoulder
and say quietly: "My dear fellow, don't begin to dread that which may
never come. There should be years of light before you. Only you'll have
to be careful."

They stood now in the door of the Garden Room. The sun was shining, the
snow was melting. There was the acrid smell of box from the hedge beyond.

"I hate caution," said young Geoffrey; "I want to do as I please."

"So does every man," said Richard, "but life teaches him that he can't."

"Oh, Life," scoffed Geoffrey Fox; "life isn't a school. It is a joy ride,
with rocks ahead."

CHAPTER IX

_In Which Anne, Passing a Shop, Turns In._

ANNE had the Crossroads ball much on her mind. She spoke to Beulah about
it.

"I don't know what to wear."

"You'd better go to town with me on Saturday and look for something."

"Perhaps I will. If I had plenty of money it would be easy. Beulah, did
you ever see such clothes as Eve Chesley's?"

"If I could spend as much as she does, I'd make more of a show."

"Think of all the tailors and dressmakers and dancing masters and
hair-dressers it has taken to make Eve what she is. And yet all the art
is hidden."

"I don't think it is hidden. I saw her powder her nose right in front of
the men that day she first came. She had a little gold case with a mirror
in it, and while