Adelaide nodded slowly.  “Yes, though I didn’t know it.”

“Why tell me?”

“Because I think I care for another man.”  Adelaide was not looking away.  On the contrary, as she spoke, saying the words in an even, reflective tone, she returned her sister-in-law’s gaze fully, frankly.  “And I don’t know what to do.  It’s very complicated—­doubly complicated.”

“The one you were first engaged to?”

“Yes,” said Del.  “Isn’t it pitiful in me?” And there was real self-contempt in her voice and in her expression.  “I assumed that I despised him because he was selfish and calculating, and such a snob!  Now I find I don’t mind his selfishness, and that I, too, am a snob.”  She smiled drearily.  “I suppose you feel the proper degree of contempt and aversion.”

“We are all snobs,” answered Madelene tranquilly.  “It’s one of the deepest dyes of the dirt we came from, the hardest to wash out.”

“Besides,” pursued Adelaide, “he and I have both learned by experience—­which has come too late; it always does.”

“Not at all,” said Madelene briskly.  “Experience is never too late.  It’s always invaluably useful in some way, no matter when it comes.”

Adelaide was annoyed by Madelene’s lack of emotion.  She had thought her sister-in-law would be stirred by a recital so romantic, so dark with the menace of tragedy.  Instead, the doctor was acting as if she were dealing with mere measles.  Adelaide, unconsciously, of course—­we are never conscious of the strong admixture of vanity in our “great” emotions—­was piqued into explaining.  “We can never be anything to each other.  There’s Dory; then there’s Theresa.  And I’d suffer anything rather than bring shame and pain on others.”

Madelene smiled—­somehow not irritatingly—­an appeal to Del’s sense of proportion.  “Suffer,” repeated she.  “That’s a good strong word for a woman to use who has health and youth and beauty, and material comfort—­and a mind capable of an infinite variety of interests.”  Adelaide’s tragic look was slipping from her.  “Don’t take too gloomy a view,” continued the physician.  “Disease and death and one other thing are the only really serious ills.  In this case of yours everything will come round quite smooth, if you don’t get hysterical and if Ross Whitney is really in earnest and not”—­Madelene’s tone grew even more deliberate—­“not merely getting up a theatrical romance along the lines of the ‘high-life’ novels you idle people set such store by.”  She saw, in Del’s wincing, that the shot had landed.  “No,” she went on, “your case is one of the commonplaces of life among those people—­and they’re in all classes—­who look for emotions and not for opportunities to be useful.”

Del smiled, and Madelene hailed the returning sense of humor as an encouraging sign.