“Don’t let this affect you, Deborah.”

“Oh, don’t worry, dearie.”  And Deborah moved toward the door.  “My affair is just mine, you see, and this won’t make any difference.”

But in her heart she knew it would.  What an utter loathing she had to-night for all that people meant by sex!  Suddenly she was quivering, her limbs and her whole body hot.

“You say I’m cold,” she was thinking.  “Cold toward Allan, calm and cool, nothing but mind and reason!  You say it means little to me, all that!  But if I had had trouble with Allan, would I have come running home to talk?  Wouldn’t I have hugged it tight?  And isn’t that love?  What do you know of me and the life I’ve led?  Do you know how it feels to want to work, to be something yourself, without any man?  And can’t that be a passion?  Have you had to live with Edith here and see what motherhood can be, what it can do to a woman?  And now you come with another side, just as narrow as hers, devouring everything else in sight!  And because I’m a little afraid of that, for myself and all I want to do, you say I don’t know what love is!  But I do!  And my love’s worth more than yours!  It’s deeper, richer, it will last!...  Then why do I loathe it all to-night?...  But I don’t, I only loathe your side!...  But yours is the very heart of it!...  All right, then what am I going to do?”

She was going slowly down the stairs.  She stopped for a moment, frowning.

CHAPTER XXXII

On the floor below she met her father, who was coming out of his room.  He looked at her keenly: 

“What’s the trouble?”

“Laura’s here,” she answered.  “Trouble again with her husband.  Better leave her alone for the present—­she’s going to stay in my room for a while.”

“Very well,” her father grunted, and they went down to dinner.  There Deborah was silent, and Edith did most of the talking.  Edith, quite aware of the fact that Laura and all Laura’s ways were in disgrace for the moment, and that she and her ways with her children shone by the comparison, was bright and sweet and tactful.  Roger glanced at her more than once, with approval and with gratitude for the effort she was making to smooth over the situation.  Deborah rose before they had finished.

“Where are you off to?” Roger asked.

“Oh, there’s something I have to attend to—­”

“School again this evening, dear?” inquired Edith cheerfully, but her sister was already out of the room.  She looked at her father with quiet concern.  “I’m sorry she has to be out to-night—­to-night of all nights,” she murmured.

“Humph!” ejaculated her father.  This eternal school business of Deborah’s was beginning to get on his nerves.  Yes, just a little on his nerves!  Why couldn’t she give up one evening, just one, and get Laura out of this snarl she was in?  He heard her at the telephone, and presently she came back to them.