“Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?” she demanded.

“Yes,” he said, but with the contradictory air of fetching himself back from a long way off.  “Truly!  I’ve listened to every word.  And I don’t wonder a bit.”

“Don’t wonder at what?”

“That you said a few things to him, too.  You’ve got a valid grievance, it seems to me.  You couldn’t be blamed for quarreling with him over it as bitterly as possible.”

She barely heeded the words.  They never did mean much to Paula.  But his look and his tone reached her, and stung.

“Look here!” she said with sudden intensity.  “Before we go any farther, I want to know this.  Did Mary really need John, yesterday?”

She saw him turn pale and she had to wait two or three long breaths for her answer.  But it came evenly enough at last.

“I happened to turn up instead.  And she’s perfectly all right, to-day.”

Her eyes filled with tears.  She turned forlornly away from him and dropped down upon a settee.  “You hate me, too, now, I suppose.  As well as he.”

He sat down beside her and laid a hand upon her shoulder.  “My dear,” he said—­and his own voice had a break of tenderness in it,—­“I couldn’t hate any one to-day if I wanted to.  And I never could want to hate you.  If there’s anything I can do to help with John Wollaston....  But you see, if you want to keep your grievance you don’t need any help.  Nobody can take it away from you.  It’s only if you want to get rid of it—­because it’s making you beastly unhappy, no matter how valid it is—­that you need any help from me or any one else.  If that’s what you want, I’ll take a shot at writing you a prescription.”

“Go crawling back to him on my knees, I suppose,” she said in a tone not quite so genuinely resentful as she felt it ought to be.  “And ask him to forgive me.  What’s the good of that when he doesn’t love me?—­Oh, of course I know he does—­in a way.”

His hand dropped absently from her shoulder.  After a thoughtful moment he sprang up and took a turn of the room.  “Do you know,” he said, halting before her, “‘in a way’ is the only way there is.  The only way any two people ever do love each other.  That’s what makes half the trouble, I believe.  Trying to define it as if it were a standard thing.  Like sterling silver; so many and so many hundredths per cent. pure.  Love’s whatever the personal emotion is that draws two people together.  It may be anything.  It may make them kind to each other, or it may make them nag each other into the mad-house, or it may make them shoot each other dead.  It’s probably never exactly the same thing between any two pairs of people...”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said petulantly.

“I’m not a bit sure it’s nonsense,” he persisted.  “I only just thought of it, but I believe I’ve got on to something.  Well, if I’m right, then the problem is to adjust that emotion to your life, or your life to that emotion, in such a way that the thing will work.  There aren’t any rules.  There can’t be any.  It’s a matter of—­well, that’s the word—­adjustment.”