eavens and earth! People
of our age, who have really lived, don't need somebody in a book to tell
them what's happening to them. Don't you _know_ whether you really love
Elly and Mark and Paul? If you don't, I should think a few minutes'
thought and recollection of the last ten years would tell you, all
right. Don't you _know_ whether we hate each other, you and I?"

Marise drew a long breath of relief. This was the sort of talk she
wanted. She clutched at the strong hand which seemed at last held out to
her. She did so want to be talked out of it all. "Oh good! then, Neale,
you don't believe any of that sort of talk? You were only saying so for
argument."

He withdrew the hand. "Yes, I do believe a good deal of as a general
proposition. What I'm saying, what I'm always saying, dear, and trying
my best to live, is that everybody must decide for himself when a
general proposition applies to him, what to believe about his own life
and its values. Nobody else can tell him."

She approached along another line. "But, Neale, that's all very well for
you, because you have so much withstandingness in you. But for me, there
are things so sacred, so intimate, so much a part of me, that only to
have some rough hand laid on them, to have them pulled out and pawed
over and thought about . . . it frightens me so, sets me in such a quiver!
And they don't seem the same again. _Aren't_ there things in life so
high and delicate that they can't stand questioning?"

He considered this a long time, visibly putting all his intelligence on
it. "I can't say, for you," he finally brought out. "You're so much
finer and more sensitive than I. But I've never in all these years seen
that your fineness and your sensitiveness make you any less strong in
the last analysis. You suffer more, respond more to all the implications
of things; but I don't see that there is any reason to think there's any
inherent weakness in you that need make you afraid to look at facts."

He presented this testimony to her, seriously, gravely. It took her
breath, coming from him. She could only look at him in speechless
gratitude and swallow hard. Finally she said, falteringly, "You're too
good, Neale, to say that. I don't deserve it. I'm awfully weak, many
times."

"I wouldn't say it, if it weren't so," he answered, "and I didn't say
you weren't weak sometimes. I said you were strong when all was said and
done."

Even in her emotion, she had an instant's inward sm