tual
convolutions. But about Brenton's wife? She seemed to me then the
typical shrewd Yankee who would adapt herself to any sort of
circumstances and get the best end of any sort of bargain."

Olive nodded.

"You've about hit it, Reed. But then, I'm not fair to her."

"Not your sort, eh?" But Reed, as he looked at Olive and remembered
Catia, felt no real need to put the question.

"It's not that so much--well--no--I can't seem to understand her." Then
Olive's eyes met his directly, and she stopped her rambling with a
little laugh. "You needn't presume on your position, Reed. It's not
decent to make me tell what I think of Mrs. Brenton, when you know you
are driving me into a corner where I either have to lie, or else abuse
her to a perfectly strange man."

"I'm not a strange man. I've seen her in her salad days. 'Twas potato
salad, too, symbolic of the soil whence she had sprung."

But Olive held up her hand for mercy.

"Reed, you are a most impossible type of invalid. If you keep on like
this, I'll tell Mrs. Brenton that you'd love to have her come and sing
hymns to you."

"Olive! For--" And then his curiosity overcame his consternation. "Can
she sing?" he queried.

"Very prettily." Olive's accent defied analysis. "She would love it,
too. I know, because, only the other day, she asked me to give you a
message."

"And you embezzled it?"

"Until it seemed a proper season. If I had given it too early, you
might have mislaid it in your memory, and forgotten to send a grateful
answer."

"What did the woman want?" Reed questioned, with a sudden curtness that
betrayed to Olive's ear the crackling of the thin ice on which, day by
day, they skated over the surface of the tragedy.

Nevertheless, Olive struck out fearlessly. Even if the ice did crack
and let them through, such old, well-tried friends as Reed and herself
could face what lay beneath it, without sentimental fears. They had
taken one such plunge together; they both preferred to avoid another,
if they could, and yet better to flounder through the ice than to keep
away from it entirely. Therefore Olive's tone was nonchalant, as she
reported,--

"I met her in the street, the day after you came home, and she begged
me to tell you--"

"She took it as a matter of course you'd be bidden to the private
view," Reed interrupted.

"Of course. The whole community understood that. Else, what was the use
of our breaking our collar bones in unison, when you l