r incredulous bewilderment, he said enthusiastically, "Yes! exactly!"

He wasn't looking at her now, but into the fire, and he rummaged for a
match and relighted his pipe before he said anything more. "Being
permanent, you know," he explained, "and--well, our real selves again."

She tried hard to keep her voice even when she asked, "But--but what
have we been?"

And at that he laughed out. "Good heavens, what haven't we been! A
couple of transfigured lunatics. Why, Rose, I haven't been able to see
straight, or think straight, for the last six weeks. And I don't believe
you have either. My ideas have just been running in circles around you.
How I ever got through those last two cases in the Appellate Court, I
don't see. When I made an argument before the bench, I was--talking to
you. When I wrote my briefs, I was writing you love-letters. And if I'd
had sense enough to realize my condition, I'd have been frightened to
death. But now--well, we've been sitting here reading away for an hour,
without having an idea of each other in our heads."

By a miracle of self-command, she managed to keep control of her voice.
"Yes," she said. "That--that other's all over, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," he demurred around a comfortable
yawn. "I expect it will catch us again every now and then. But, in the
main, we're sane people, ready to go on with our own business. What was
it you were reading?"

"I don't believe I'll read any more just now," she said. "I think I'll
go out for a walk." And she managed to get outside the room without his
discovering that anything was wrong.

It was, indeed, her first preoccupation, to make sure he shouldn't
discover the effect his words had had on her--to get far enough away
before the storm broke so that she could have it out by herself. The
crowning humiliation would be if he came blundering in on her and asked
her what was the matter.

She fled down the trail to the little lake, ran out a canoe, caught up a
paddle and bent a feverish energy to the task of getting safely around
into the shelter of a fir-grown point before she let herself stop, as
she would have said, to think. It wasn't really to think, of course.
Not, that is, to interpret out to the end of all its logical
implications, the admission he had so unconsciously made to her that
morning.

She had never seriously been hurt or frightened, Portia had said weeks
ago. And when she said it, it was true. She was b