The eyes to which he referred had been fixed in serene confidence upon his as he began to speak.  But a second later Rachael dropped them, and they rested upon her own slender hand, lying idle upon the teatable, with its plain gold ring guarded by a dozen blazing stones.  Had he really stirred her, Warren Gregory wondered, as he watched the thoughtful face under the bright, cherry-loaded hat.

“You know how often there is neither cool reason nor any cause for laughter in my life, Greg,” she said, after a moment.  “As for love—­I don’t think I know what love is!  I am an absolutely calculating woman, and my first, last, and only view of anything is just how much it affects me and my comfort.”

“I don’t believe it!” said the doctor.

“It’s true.  And why shouldn’t it be?” Rachael gave him a grave smile.  “No one,” said she seriously, “ever—­ever—­ever suggested to me that there was anything amiss in that point of view!  Why is there?”

“I don’t understand you,” said the doctor simply.

“One doesn’t often talk this way, I suppose,” she said slowly.  “But there is a funny streak of—­what shall I call it?—­ conscience, or soul, or whatever you like, in me.  Whether I get it from my mother’s Irish father or my father’s clergyman grandfather, I don’t know, but I’m eternally defending myself.  I have long sessions with myself, when I’m judge and jury, and invariably I find ‘Not Guilty!’”

“Not guilty of what?” the man asked, stirring his untasted cup.

“Not guilty of anything!” she answered, with a child’s puzzled laugh.  “I stick to my bond, I dress and talk and eat and go about--” Her voice dropped; she stared absently at the table.

“But—­” the doctor prompted.

“But—­that’s just it—­but I’m so unhappy all the time!” Rachael confessed.  “We all seem like a lot of puppets, to me—­like Bander-log!  What are we all going round and round in circles for, and who gets any fun out of it?  What’s your answer, Greg—­what makes the wheels go round?”

“’Tis love—­’tis love—­that makes—­etcetera, etcetera,” supplied the doctor, his tone less flippant than his words.

“Oh—­love!” Rachael’s voice was full of delicate scorn.  “I’ve seen a great deal of all sorts and kinds of love,” she went on, “and I must say that I consider love a very much overrated article!  You’re laughing at me, you bold gossoon, but I mean it.  Clarence loved Paula madly, kidnapped her from a boarding-school and all that, but I don’t know how much their seven years together helped the world go round.  He never loved me, never once said he did, but I’ve made him a better wife than she did.  He loves Bill, now, and it’s the worst thing in the world for her!”

“There’s some love for you,” said Doctor Gregory, glancing across the room to the figures of Miss Leila Buckney and Mr. Parker Hoyt, who were laughing over a cabinet full of ivories.