ral thing in the world for you to stay at home?
Jane--_poor_ old Marty!" She ran to Jane and flung her arms emotionally
about her.

"Sally, there's no more chance----"

But the other cut in, panic-stricken, "Oh,--don't make up your mind
now--to-night! Wait! Just spend the summer in the dear old way, as we've
always done, and see if you don't fit right into your old niche again,
with--with----"

"With a steadily fattening Marty," said Jane, bright-cheeked, "and a hot,
pink nursery with a fat and well-oiled Kewpie?"

"Jane," said Sarah coldly, "there are some things too sacred to----"

"To be anything but decently and sanely frank about," said Jane. "My
child, the story isn't going to have that particular happy ending for
which you pant. You see all my life in a proscribed pattern. Like a
sentimental ballad's second verse ... back to the grassy meadows ...
childhood's happy hours again.... Once again he sang--

"'For you are my li--hittel--sw--heet--heart.'"

"Then," said Sarah with conviction, "it's either the man-you-met-on-the-boat,
or that Irish missionary person!"

Jane laughed. Wasn't it amazing how good old Sally, herself conceived for
celibacy, yearned to mate up every one within her ken! Nature's little
way of evening up, perhaps; if Sarah herself was to carry on the race
chain, was she to make it up by tireless toil in urging others on?
"Sally, Michael Daragh, as I've tried to make clear, is an over-soul. His
large feet lug his large frame about on this terrestrial sphere, but in
reality he isn't here at all. He is quite literally absent from the body
and present with the Lord. As I told you before,--a large body of man
entirely surrounded by conscience. No more aware of me, as a woman, than
he is of Emma Ellis--and you don't get the force of that"--she grinned
shamelessly--"unless you know Emma."

"Then, how about--the other one?"

Jane considered, picking and choosing her words as she loved to do.
"Well, Michael feels I am too much of the world, Rodney that I am too
little; Michael is above me, spiritually speaking, and Rodney is
beneath--which would, of course, make him much the pleasanter person to
live with! Rodney is thoroughly and comfortably this-worldly; Michael
is--other-worldly! This is the truth of the matter, Sally; Rodney
Harrison is keen about my neat little brain and Michael Daragh is gravely
concerned about my soul, but I think neither one is interested in my
heart!"

She spran