goddess-like sweeps, and was to be heard
thereafter calling Mr. Logan with a good-will. Presently the others,
sitting silently, heard his voice answer gaily, and then no more. They
had met and were off together as usual.

"You see," said Marjorie, "he really didn't care for me. I think he
and Peggy will marry each other one of these days, even if she is only
sixteen."

"She will get over being sixteen, of course," said Francis, still in
the preoccupied voice. "I suppose it's her superb vitality that
attracts him. She is actually making him almost human."

Marjorie smiled faintly at that.

"You don't like him much, do you?" she said.

"Do you remember, in your letters, how you always called him 'your
friend with the fits?'"

"Well, wasn't he?" said Francis defensively.

"Well, I don't think it was fits," she answered, balancing her ideas as
if they had met only to discuss Logan; "it was some sort of a nervous
seizure. At any rate, Peggy nursed him through one of the attacks, so
if she does marry him she knows the worst. But maybe they won't be
married. I remember, now, he told me once that an emotion to be really
convincing must be only touched lightly and foregone."

"That man certainly talks a lot of rot," said Francis. It was curious
how, whenever they were together, they fell into intimate
conversation--even if everything in the world had been happening the
minute before. The thought came to Marjorie. "Now, my emotions,"
Francis went on, "have certainly been too darn convincing for comfort
for the last year. If I could have touched any of them lightly and
foregone them I'd have been so proud you couldn't see me for dust. But
they weren't that kind. . . . Marjorie, I've been through hell this
last while that you've been sick."

"I'm sorry," she said. It gave her the opening she had been looking
for. "But that partly was what I sent for you to talk about. Not
hell--I mean--well, our affairs. I'm well enough now to be quite quiet
and calm about them, and I think you are, too. That is," she added,
half laughing, "if you could ever be quiet and calm about anything.
What I've seen of you has either been when you've been repressing
yourself so hard that I could see the emotions bubble underneath, or
when you'd stopped repressing, and were telling me what you really
thought of me."

"Oh, don't!" he said, wincing.

"Well, why not, Francis? You see, it's sort of as if we were both dead
now,