ground.

"He gives me nothing!" exclaimed Adelaide bitterly. "He is waiting for me
to learn to love him. He ought to know that a woman has to be taught to
love--at least the sort of woman I am. He treats me as if I were his
equal, when he ought to see that I'm not; that I'm like a child, and have
to be shown what's good for me, and _made_ to take it."

"Then, perhaps, after all," said Madelene slowly, "you do care for Dory."

"Of course I care for him; how could anyone help it? But he won't let
me--he won't let me!" She was on the verge of hysteria, and her loss of
self-control was aggravated by the feeling that she was making a weak,
silly exhibition of herself.

"If you do care for Dory, and Dory cares for you, and you don't care for
Ross--" began Madelene.

"But I do care for Ross, too! Oh, I must be bad--bad! Could a nice woman
care for two men at the same time?"

"I'd have said not," was Madelene's answer. "But now I see that she
could--and I see why."

"Dory means something to me that Ross does not. Ross means something that
Dory does not. I want it all--all that both of them represent. I can't
give up Dory; I can't give up Ross. You don't understand, Madelene,
because you've had the good luck to get it all from Arthur."

After a silence, Madelene said: "Well, Del, what are you going to do?"

"Nothing."

"That's sensible!" approved Madelene. "If Ross really loves you, then,
whether he can have you or not, he'll free himself from Theresa. He
simply couldn't go on with her. And if you really care for him, then,
when Dory comes home he'll free you."

"That ought to be so," said Adelaide, not seeing the full meaning of
Madelene's last words. "But it isn't. Neither Ross nor I is strong
enough. We're just ordinary people, the sort that most everybody is and
that most everybody despises when they see them or read about them as
they really are. No, he and I will each do the conventional thing. We'll
go our separate ways "--contemptuously--"the _easiest_ ways. And we'll
regard ourselves as martyrs to duty--that's how they put it in the
novels, isn't it?"

"At least," said Madelene, with a calmness she was far from feeling,
"both you and Ross have had your lesson in the consequence of doing
things in a hurry."

"That's the only way people brought up as we've been ever do anything. If
we don't act on impulse, we don't act at all; we drift on."

"Drifting is action, the most decisive kind of action." Madelen