Why shouldn’t I tell Jane what I really thought of Cousin James and discuss him broadly and frankly?  I don’t know!  Lately I don’t want to think about him or have anybody mention him in my presence.  I’ve got a consciousness of him way off in a corner of me somewhere and I’m just brooding over it.  Everybody in town has been in this house since Jane has been here, all the time, and I haven’t seen him alone for ages it seems.  Maybe that’s why I have had to make a desert island inside myself to take him to.

“And I have been thinking since you told me of the situation in which he and Mrs. Carruthers have been placed by this financial catastrophe, how wonderful it will be if love really does come to them, when her grief is healed by time.  He will rear her interesting children into women that will be invaluable to the commonwealth,” Jane continued as she tied a blue bow on the end of her long black plait.

“Do you think that there—­there are any signs of—­of such a thing yet?” I asked with pitiful weakness as I wilted down into my pillow.

“Just a bit in his manner to her, though I may be influenced in my judgment by the evident suitability of such a solution of the situation,” she answered as she settled herself back against one of the posts of my high old bed and looked me clean through and through, even unto the shores of that desert island itself.

“I hope you have been noting these different emotional situations and reactions among your friends carefully in your record, Evelina,” she continued in an interested and biological tone of voice and expression of eye.  “In a small community like this it is much easier to get at the real underlying motive of such things than it is in a more complicated civilization.  I have seen you transcribing notes into our book.  Since I have come to Glendale I am more firmly determined than ever that the attitude of emotional equality that we determined upon in the spring is the true solution of most of the complicated man-and-woman problems.  I am anxious to see it tried out in five other different communities that we will select.  I would not seem to be indelicate, dear, but I do not see any signs of your having been especially drawn emotionally towards any of your friends, though your attitude of sisterly comradeship and frankness with them is more beautiful than I thought it was possible for such a thing to be.  You are not being tempted to shirk any of your duties of womanhood because of your interest in your art, are you?  I will confess to you that the thing that brought me down upon you was your news of this commission for the series of station-gardens.  I think you will probably work better after this side of your nature is at rest.  Of course, a union with Mr. Hall would be ideal for you.  You must consider it seriously.”

The “must” in Jane’s voice sounded exactly like that “must” looked in Richard’s telegram, which has been enforced with others just as emphatic ever since.