“She has a standing invitation, of course,” said Mrs. Marshall-Smith.  “Indeed, I wrote the other day, asking her if she could come here instead of to La Chance for her vacation.  It’s far nearer for her.”

“Oh, Judith couldn’t waste time to go visiting,” said Sylvia.  “I’ve told you she is worth ten of me.  She’s on the home-stretch of her trained-nurse’s course now.  She has only two weeks’ vacation.”

“She’s going to be a trained nurse?” asked Arnold in surprise, washing down a large mouthful of fish with a large mouthful of wine.  “What the dickens does she do that for?”

“Why, she’s crazy about it,—­ever since she was a little girl, fifteen years old and first saw the inside of a hospital.  That’s just Judith,—­so splendid and purposeful, and single-minded.  I wish to goodness I knew what I want to do with myself half so clearly as she always has.”

If she had, deep under her consciousness, a purpose to win more applause from Morrison, by more disinterested admiration of Judith’s good points, she was quite rewarded by the quickness with which he championed her against her own depreciation.  “I’ve always noticed,” he said meditatively, slowly taking a sip from his wine-glass, “that nobody can be single-minded who isn’t narrow-minded; and I think it likely that people who aren’t so cocksure what they want to do with themselves, hesitate because they have a great deal more to do with.  A nature rich in fine and complex possibilities takes more time to dispose of itself, but when it does, the world’s beauty is the gainer.”  He pointed the reference frankly by a smile at Sylvia, who flushed with pleasure and looked down at her plate.  She was surprised at the delight which his leisurely, whimsically philosophical little speech gave her.  She forgot to make any answer, absorbed as she was in poring over it and making out new meanings in it.  How he had understood at less than a word the secret uncertainty of herself which so troubled her; and with what astonishing sureness he had known what to say to reassure her, to make her see clear!  And then, her quick mind leaped to another significance....  All during these past weeks when she had been falling more and more under the fascination of his personality, when she had been piqued at his disregard of her, when she had thought he found her “young,” and had bracketed her carelessly with Arnold, he had been in reality watching her, he had found her interesting enough to observe her, to study her, to have a theory about her character; and having done all that, to admire her as she admired him.  Never in her life had she been the recipient of flattery so precisely to her taste.  Her glow of pleasure was so warm that she suddenly distrusted her own judgment, she looked up at him quickly to see if she had not mistaken his meaning, had not absurdly exaggerated the degree to which he ... she found his eyes on hers, deep-set, shadowy eyes which did not, as she looked up, either