“I am, Doctor David.”

He patted her hand.

“Mind you,” he said, “I don’t know anything and I’m not asking any questions.  But if the Board of Trade, or the Chief of Police, had come to me and said, ’Who is the best wife for—­well, for a young man who is an important part of this community?’ I’d have said in reply, ‘Gentlemen, there is a Miss Elizabeth Wheeler who—­’”

Suddenly she bent down and kissed him.

“Oh, do you think so?” she asked, breathlessly.  “I love him so much, Doctor David.  And I feel so unworthy.”

“So you are,” he said.  “So’s he.  So are all of us, when it comes to a great love, child.  That is, we are never quite what the other fellow thinks we are.  It’s when we don’t allow for what the scientist folk call a margin of error that we come our croppers.  I wonder”—­he watched her closely—­“if you young people ever allow for a margin of error?”

“I only know this,” she said steadily.  “I can’t imagine ever caring any less.  I’ve never thought about myself very much, but I do know that.  You see, I think I’ve cared for a long time.”

When she had gone he sat in his chair staring ahead of him and thinking.  Yes.  She would stick.  She had loyalty, loyalty and patience and a rare humility.  It was up to Dick then.  And again he faced the possibility of an opening door into the past, of crowding memories, of confusion and despair and even actual danger.  And out of that, what?

Habit.  That was all he had to depend on.  The brain was a thing of habits, like the body; right could be a habit, and so could evil.  As a man thought, so he was.  For all of his childhood, and for the last ten years, Dick’s mental habits had been right; his environment had been love, his teaching responsibility.  Even if the door opened, then, there was only the evil thinking of two or three reckless years to combat, and the door might never open.  Happiness, Lauler had said, would keep it closed, and Dick was happy.

When at five o’clock the nurse came in with a thermometer he was asleep in his chair, his mouth slightly open, and snoring valiantly.  Hearing Dick in the lower hall, she went to the head of the stairs, her finger to her lips.

Dick nodded and went into the office.  The afternoon mail was lying there, and he began mechanically to open it.  His thoughts were elsewhere.

Now that he had taken the step he had so firmly determined not to take, certain things, such as Clare Rossiter’s story, David’s uneasiness, his own doubts, no longer involved himself alone, nor even Elizabeth and himself.  They had become of vital importance to her family.

There was no evading the issue.  What had once been only his own misfortune, mischance, whatever it was, had now become of vital importance to an entire group of hitherto disinterested people.  He would have to put his situation clearly before them and let them judge.  And he would have to clarify that situation for them and for himself.