Olivia was silent, but she had much to think of.

It was a few days later still that she found herself in Rodney Temple’s little office in the Gallery of Fine Arts.  She had come ostensibly to tell him that everything had been arranged for the sale.

“Lemon and Company think that early in December would be the best time, as people are beginning then to spend money for Christmas.  Mr. Lemon seems to think we’ve got a good many things the smaller connoisseurs will want.  The servants are to go next Tuesday, so that if you and Cousin Cherry could take papa then—­I’m to stay with Lulu Sentner; and I shall go from her house to be married—­some day, when everything else is settled.  Did you know that before Mr. Davenant went away he left a small bank account for papa?—­two or three thousand dollars—­so that we have money to go on with.  Rupert wants to spend a week or two in New York and Washington, after which we shall come back here and pick up papa.  He’s not very keen on coming with us, but I simply couldn’t—­”

He nodded at the various points in her recital, blinking at her searchingly out of his kind old eyes.

“You look pale,” he said, “and old.  You look forty.”

She surprised him by saying, with a sudden outburst:  “Cousin Rodney, do you think it’s any harm for a woman to marry one man when she’s in love with another?” Before he had time to recover himself, she followed this question with a second.  “Do you think it’s possible for a person to be in love with two people at the same time?”

He understood now the real motive of her visit.

“I’m not a very good judge of love affairs,” he said, after a minute’s reflection.  “But one thing I know, and it’s this—­that when we do our duty we don’t have to bother with the question as to whether it’s any harm or not.”

“We may do our duty, and still make people unhappy.”

“No; not unless we do it in the wrong way.”

“So that if I feel that to go on and keep my word is the right thing—­or rather the only thing—?”

“That settles it, dearie.  The right thing is the only thing—­and it makes for everybody’s happiness.”

“Even if it seems that it—­it couldn’t?”

“I’m only uttering platitudes, dearie, when I say that happiness is the flower of right.  No other plant can grow it; and that plant can’t grow any other flower.  When you’ve done the thing you feel you’re called to do—­the thing you couldn’t refuse while still keeping your self-respect—­well, then, you needn’t be afraid that any one will suffer in the long run—­and yourself least of all.”

“In the long run!  That means—­”

“Oh, there may be a short run.  I’m not denying that.  But no one worth his salt would be afraid of it.  And that, dearie,” he added, blinking, “is all I know about love affairs.”

There being no one in the gallery on which the office opened, she kissed him as she thanked him and went away.  She walked homeward, taking the more retired streets through Cambridge and into Waverton, so as to be the more free for thinking.  It was a relief to her to have spoken out.  Oddly enough, she felt her heart lighter toward Davenant from the mere fact of having told some one, or having partially told some one, that she loved him.