she's sharp-tongued once in a
while. It's when she feels the muddy water oozing through her fingers."

He fancied that Lydia's eyes on his were a little blank, perhaps absent,
and broke off with a short laugh. He was quite hardened to the fact that
people never understood his fanciful metaphors, but Lydia, as a child,
had used to have a curious intuitive divination of his meaning. After
his laugh he sighed and turned the talk.

"Well, and has Flora Burgess been after you to get your impression of
Endbury as compared with Europe? Your mother said she wanted an
interview with you for next Sunday's _Society Notes_."

Lydia smiled. The subject was an old joke with them. "No; she hasn't
appeared yet. I haven't seen her--not since my birthday a year ago, the
time she described the supper-table as a 'glittering, scintillating mass
of cut-glass and silver, and yet without what could really be called
ostentation.' Isn't she delicious! How is the little old thing, anyway?"

"Still trotting industriously about Endbury back yards sowing the
dragon's teeth of her idiotic ideas and standards."

"Oh, I remember, you don't like her," said Lydia. "She always seems just
funny to me--funny and pathetic. She's so dowdy, and reverential to
folks with money, and enjoys other people's good times so terrifically."

"She's like some political bosses--admirable in private life, but a
menace to the community just the same."

Lydia laughed involuntarily, in spite of her preoccupation. "Flora
Burgess a menace to the community!"

The doctor turned away and began to mount the stairs. "Me and
Cassandra!" he called over his shoulder in his high, sweet treble. "Just
you wait and see!"

He disappeared down the upper hall, finding his way about the darkened
house with a familiarity that betokened long practice.

Lydia sat down on the bottom step to wait for his return. The clock in
the dining-room struck twelve. It came over her with a clap that but
half a day had passed since she had run out into the dawn. For an
instant she had the naive, melodramatic instinct of youth to deck out
its little events in the guise of crises. She began to tell herself with
gusto that she had passed some important turning-point in her life;
when, as was not infrequent with her, she lost the thread of her thought
in a sudden mental confusion which, like a curtain of fog, shut her off
from definite reflection. Complicated things that moved rapidly always
tired Lydia