murmured the doctor. "Nobody can
claim that there's anything very seductive to the average young lady in
Rankin's fanaticism."

"Oh, you admit he's a fanatic!" Mrs. Sandworth seized on a valuable
piece of driftwood which the doctor's tempest had thrown at her feet.

"Everybody who's worth his salt is a fanatic."

"Not Paul. Everybody says he's so sane and levelheaded."

"There isn't a hotter one in creation!"

"Than _Paul_?"

"Than Paul."

"Oh, Marius!" she reproached him for levity.

"He's a fanatic for success."

"Oh, I don't call _that_--"

"Nor nobody else in Endbury--but it is, all the same. And the only
wonder is that Lydia should have been attracted by Rankin's heretical
brand and not by Paul's orthodox variety. It shows she's rare."

"Good gracious, Marius! You talk as though it were a question of ideas
or convictions."

"That's a horrible conception," he admitted gravely.

"It's which one she's in love with!" Mrs. Sandworth emitted this with
solemnity.

The doctor stood up to go. "She's not in love with either," he
pronounced. "She's never been allowed the faintest sniff at reality or
life or experience--how can she be in love?"

"Well, they're in love with her," she triumphed for her sex.

"I don't know anything about Paul's inner workings, and as for Rankin, I
don't know whether he's in love with her or not. He's sorry for
her--he's touched by her--"

Mrs. Sandworth felt the ground slip from beneath her feet. "Good
gracious me! If he's not in love with her, nor she with him, what are
you making all this fuss about?"

The doctor thrust out his lips. "I'm only protesting in my usual feeble,
inadequate manner, after the harm's all done, at idiots and egotists
laying their dirty hands on a sacred thing--the right of youth to its
own life--"

"Well, if you call that a feeble protest--!" she called after him.

He reappeared, hat in hand. "It's nothing to what I'd like to say. I
will add that Daniel Rankin's a man in a million."

Mrs. Sandworth responded, rather neatly for her, that she should hope so
indeed, and added, "But, Marius, she couldn't have married him--really!
Mercy! What had he to offer her--compared with Paul? Everybody has
always said what a _suitable_ marriage--"

Dr. Melton crammed his hat on his head fiercely and said nothing.

"But it's so," she insisted.

"He hasn't anything to offer to Marietta, perhaps."

"Marietta's _married_!" Mrs. Sandworth kept herself ancho