"

"Are you joking?" Nina demanded.

"Joking? Of course not."

Nina sat down again on the bed, her eyes on her sister, curious and not
a little apprehensive.

"It's the first time it's ever happened, to my knowledge," she declared.
"I know he's avoided me like poison. I thought he hated women. You know
Clare Rossiter is--"

Elizabeth turned suddenly.

"Clare is ridiculous," she said. "She hasn't any reserve, or dignity,
or anything else. And I don't see what my going to the theater with Dick
Livingstone has to do with her anyhow."

Nina raised her carefully plucked eyebrows.

"Really!" she said. "You needn't jump down my throat, you know." She
considered, her eyes on her sister. "Don't go and throw yourself away on
Dick Livingstone, Sis. You're too good-looking, and he hasn't a cent. A
suburban practice, out all night, that tumble-down old house and two
old people hung around your necks, for Doctor David is letting go pretty
fast. It just won't do. Besides, there's a story going the rounds about
him, that--"

"I don't want to hear it, if you don't mind."

She went to the door and opened it.

"I've hardly spoken a dozen words to him in my life. But just remember
this. When I do find the man I want to marry, I shall make up my own
mind. As you did," she added as a parting shot.

She was rather sorry as she went down the stairs. She had begun to
suspect what the family had never guessed, that Nina was not very happy.
More and more she saw in Nina's passion for clothes and gaiety, for
small possessions, an attempt to substitute them for real things. She
even suspected that sometimes Nina was a little lonely.

Wallie Sayre rose from a deep chair as she entered the living-room.

"Hello," he said, "I was on the point of asking Central to give me this
number so I could get you on the upstairs telephone."

"Nina and I were talking. I'm sorry."

Wallie, in spite of Walter Wheeler's opinion of him, was an engaging
youth with a wide smile, an air of careless well-being, and an obstinate
jaw. What he wanted he went after and generally secured, and Elizabeth,
enlightened by Nina, began to have a small anxious feeling that
afternoon that what he wanted just now happened to be herself.

"Nina coming down?" he asked.

"I suppose so. Why?"

"You couldn't pass the word along that you are going to be engaged for
the next half hour?"

"I might, but I certainly don't intend to."

"You are as hard to isolate as a--