She could not see that this was helping her much.  It was not at all the line she’d projected for him.  Yet she was finding it hard not to feel less tragic.  She had even caught herself, just now, upon the brink of being amused.  “Wait till you’ve tried to adjust something, as you say, with John, and have had him tell you what you think until you believe you do.  When he’s really being perfectly unreasonable all the while.”

“Of course,” March observed with the air of one making a material concession, “he is a good bit of a prima donna himself.”

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.  And then, petulantly, she accused him of laughing at her, of refusing to take her seriously, of trying to be clever like the Wollastons.

“Look here, Paula,” he said, and he put so much edge into his tone that she did, “have you ever spent five minutes out of the last five years trying to think what John was, besides your husband?  I don’t believe it.  When I spoke of him to you, months ago, as a famous person you didn’t know what I was talking about.  He is.  He’s got a better chance—­say to get into the next edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, than you have.  He’s got a career.  He had it long before he knew you existed.—­How old was he when he came to Vienna?  About fifty, wasn’t he?”

“Forty-nine,” she said with the air of one making a serious contradiction; but her, “Oh, well,—­” and a little laugh that followed it conceded that it was not.

“He’d had a career then for a long time,” March went on.  “He was established.  He had things about as he wanted them.  And then, out of nowhere, an irresistible thing like you came along and torpedoed him.  He must have realized that he had gone clean out of his head about you.  A man of that age doesn’t fall in love unconsciously, nor easily either.  He must have had frightful misgivings about persuading you to marry him.  On your account as well as his own.  Because he is that, you know.  Conscientious, I mean.  Almost to a morbid degree.”

“Oh, yes,” she conceded, “they’re both like that.  They spend half their time working things out trying to be fair.”

He gave her a quick look, then came and sat down beside her again.  “Well, then,” he said, “we’re on the right track.  Just follow it along.  You’re the one big refractory thing in his life.  The thing that constantly wants reconciling with something else,—­at the same time that you’re the delight of it, and the center and core of it.  And while he’s trying to deal with those problems justly, you know, he’s taking on all of yours, too.  He’s trying to see things with your eyes, feeling them with your nerves, and since he’s got a kind of uncanny penetration, I’d be willing to bet that he can tell you, half the time, what you’re thinking about better than you could yourself.  No wonder, between his conscience and his desire—­your mutual desire—­he’s unreasonable.  And since he’s too old to be reformed out of his conscience that leaves the adjustment up to you.”