," she
said.

"What is your answer?"

"Oh, I couldn't decide so quickly. I must think."

"You mean you must see your young man again--see whether there isn't
some way of working it out with him."

"That, too," replied she simply. "But--it's nearly four o'clock----"

"I'll come back at seven for my answer."

"No, I'll write you to-night."

"I must know at once. This suspense has got to end. It unfits me for
everything."

"I'll--I'll decide--to-night," she said, with a queer catch in her
voice. "You'll get the letter in the morning mail."

"Very well." And he gave her his club address.

She opened the door in her impatience to be rid of him. He went with a
hasty "Good-by" which she echoed as she closed the door.

When he left the house he saw standing on the curb before it a tall,
good-looking young man--with a frank amiable face. He hesitated,
glowering at the young man's profile. Then he went his way, suffocating
with jealous anger, depressed, despondent, fit for nothing but to drink
and to brood in fatuous futility.

XVI

Until very recently indeed psychology was not an ology at all but an
indefinite something or other "up in the air," the sport of the winds
and fogs of transcendental tommy rot. Now, however, science has drawn it
down, has fitted it in its proper place as a branch of physiology. And
we are beginning to have a clearer understanding of the thoughts and the
thought-producing actions of ourselves and our fellow beings. Soon it
will be no longer possible for the historian and the novelist, the
dramatist, the poet, the painter or sculptor to present in all
seriousness as instances of sane human conduct, the aberrations
resulting from various forms of disease ranging from indigestion in its
mild, temper-breeding forms to acute homicidal or suicidal mania. In
that day of greater enlightenment a large body of now much esteemed art
will become ridiculous. Practically all the literature of strenuous
passion will go by the board or will be relegated to the medical library
where it belongs; and it, and the annals of violence found in the daily
newspapers of our remote time will be cited as documentary proof of the
low economic and hygienic conditions prevailing in that almost barbarous
period. For certain it is that the human animal when healthy and well
fed is invariably peaceable and kindly and tolerant--up to the limits of
selfishness, and even encroaching upon those limits.

Of writin