Kate knew it was not really home, but she had to admit that these busy undomestic moderns had found a good substitute for it:  or, at least, that, taking their domesticity through the mediumship of Mrs. Dennison, they contrived to absorb enough of it to keep them going.  But, no, it was not really home.  Kate could not feel that she, personally, ever had been “home.”  She thought of that song of songs, “The Wanderer.”

     “Where art thou?  Where art thou, O home so dear?”

She was thinking of this still as, her salutation over, she seated herself in the chair Dr. von Shierbrand placed for her.

“Busy thinking this morning, Miss Barrington?” Mrs. Dennison asked gently.  “That tells me you’re meaning to do some good thing to-day.  I can’t say how splendid you social workers seem to us common folks.”

“Oh, my dear Mrs. Dennison!” Kate protested.  “You and your kind are the true social workers.  If only women—­all women—­understood how to make true homes, there wouldn’t be any need for people like us.  We’re only well-intentioned fools who go around putting plasters over the sores.  We don’t even reach down as far as the disease—­though I suppose we think we do when we get a lot of statistics together.  But the men and women who go about their business, doing their work well all of the time, are the preventers of social trouble.  Isn’t that so, Dr. von Shierbrand?”

That amiable German readjusted his glasses upon his handsome nose and began to talk about the Second Part of “Faust.”  The provocation, though slight, had seemed to him sufficient.

“My husband has already eaten and gone!” observed Honora with some chagrin.  “Can’t you use your influence, Mrs. Dennison, to make him spend a proper amount of time at the table?”

“Oh, he doesn’t need to eat except once in a great while.  He has the ways of genius, Mrs. Fulham.  Geniuses like to eat at odd times, and my own feeling is that they should be allowed to do as they please.  It is very bad for geniuses to make them follow a set plan,” said Mrs. Dennison earnestly.

“That woman,” observed Dr. von Shierbrand under his breath to Kate, “has the true feminine wisdom.  She should have been the wife of a great man.  It was such qualities which Goethe meant to indicate in his Marguerite.”

Honora, who had overheard, lifted her pensive gray eyes and interchanged a long look with Dr. von Shierbrand.  Each seemed to be upon the verge of some remark.

“Well,” said Kate briskly, “if you want to speak, why don’t you?  Are your thoughts too deep for words?”

Von Shierbrand achieved a laugh, but Honora was silent.  She seemed to want to say that there was more than one variety of feminine wisdom; while Von Shierbrand, Kate felt quite sure, would have maintained that there was but one—­the instinctive sort which “Marguerite knew.”

* * * * *

The day that Mary Morrison was to arrive conflicted with the visit of a very great Frenchman to Professor Fulham’s laboratory.