lay too deep in
subliminal abysses to struggle to the surface of her consciousness. That
he should go to the one house and she to the other was as right as it
had been ten years before. It was so right that she was stupefied by its
rightness. It was so right that the rightness acted on her like an
opiate. It was a minute in which sheer helplessness might have relaxed
her hold on her substitute for love had she not had such pressing need
to make use of it there and then.

She made use of it as, on occasions requiring a show of lavishness,
people eke out a meager supply of silver with plenty of plausible
electroplate. In installing her parents in their old rooms, in bidding
them take their place as masters and forget that they were guests, she
simulated the pleasure not only of a happy daughter but of a happy wife.
While the circumstances of the home-coming tempered anything in the
nature of exuberance, they couldn't forbid all joy, and of joy of just
the right sparkle she was as prodigal as if her treasure-chest had been
stocked with it. Moreover, she was sure that except for the protest, "If
we take these rooms, what are you going to do with Thor?" the worthy
couple didn't know the difference between what she placed before them
and the sterling metal with the hall-mark.

If there was a suspicion in her mother's mind it reserved itself till,
on kissing them good night, Lois fled to the room she had occupied as a
girl. Though she closed the door behind her, the mother pushed it open.
"Look here, Lois," Bessie said, not quite with anxiety and yet not quite
without it, "there's nothing between you and Thor, is there?"

Lois felt that the form of the question saved her. It enabled her to
answer so much more truthfully than her mother knew. "No, mamma dear;
there's nothing at all between us." She went so far as to make the
declaration emphatic and indulge in a tone of faint bitterness:
"_Absolutely_ nothing at all--and I doubt if there ever will be--now."

Though the mother retired before she could catch the concluding
syllable, Lois regretted the bitterness as soon as she felt it escape
her. There was no bitterness in her substitute for love, for the
substitute for love was.... She had always admitted that she didn't know
_what_ it was. But there came back to her mind the words she had been
acting upon for a fortnight and more: "The mission of Christ, me dear
Mrs. Thor, was salvation." And there was no bitterness in that