ll _me_?"

"Because I think I care for another man." Adelaide was not looking away.
On the contrary, as she spoke, saying the words in an even, reflective
tone, she returned her sister-in-law's gaze fully, frankly. "And I don't
know what to do. It's very complicated--doubly complicated."

"The one you were first engaged to?"

"Yes," said Del. "Isn't it pitiful in me?" And there was real
self-contempt in her voice and in her expression. "I assumed that I
despised him because he was selfish and calculating, and _such_ a snob!
Now I find I don't mind his selfishness, and that I, too, am a snob." She
smiled drearily. "I suppose you feel the proper degree of contempt and
aversion."

"We are all snobs," answered Madelene tranquilly. "It's one of the
deepest dyes of the dirt we came from, the hardest to wash out."

"Besides," pursued Adelaide, "he and I have both learned by
experience--which has come too late; it always does."

"Not at all," said Madelene briskly. "Experience is never too late. It's
always invaluably useful in some way, no matter when it comes."

Adelaide was annoyed by Madelene's lack of emotion. She had thought her
sister-in-law would be stirred by a recital so romantic, so dark with the
menace of tragedy. Instead, the doctor was acting as if she were dealing
with mere measles. Adelaide, unconsciously, of course--we are never
conscious of the strong admixture of vanity in our "great" emotions--was
piqued into explaining. "We can never be anything to each other. There's
Dory; then there's Theresa. And I'd suffer anything rather than bring
shame and pain on others."

Madelene smiled--somehow not irritatingly--an appeal to Del's sense of
proportion. "Suffer," repeated she. "That's a good strong word for a
woman to use who has health and youth and beauty, and material
comfort--and a mind capable of an infinite variety of interests."
Adelaide's tragic look was slipping from her. "Don't take too gloomy a
view," continued the physician. "Disease and death and one other thing
are the only really serious ills. In this case of yours everything will
come round quite smooth, if you don't get hysterical and if Ross Whitney
is really in earnest and not"--Madelene's tone grew even more
deliberate--"not merely getting up a theatrical romance along the lines
of the 'high-life' novels you idle people set such store by." She saw, in
Del's wincing, that the shot had landed. "No," she went on, "your case is
one of the c