“No, I didn’t.  How can you be so unsympathetic?  Is it impossible for you to comprehend the unseen link that binds John and me?  I rummaged the book store until I found a charming little edition of ’Marshall’s Geologist’s Pocket Companion,’ covered with beautiful brown limp Russia leather—­ I thought the Russia binding was so inspirational—­ with a sweet little clasp that keeps it closed—­ typical of our hands at parting.  On the fly-leaf I wrote:  ’To J. L., in remembrance of many interesting conversations with his friend, K. K.’  It only needed another K to be emblematic and political, a reminiscence of the olden times, when you people of the South, Dorothy, were making it hot for us deserving folks in the North.  I hadn’t time to go through the book very thoroughly, but I found many references to limestone, which I marked, and one particularly choice bit of English relating to the dissolution and re-consolidation of various minerals I drew a parallelogram around in red ink.  A friend of mine in a motor launch was good enough to take the little parcel direct to the ‘Consternation,’ and I have no doubt that at this moment Jack is perusing it, and perhaps thinking of the giver.  I hope it’s up-to-date, and that he had not previously bought a copy.”

“You don’t mean to say, Kate, that your conversation was entirely about geology?”

“Certainly not.  How could you have become imbued with an idea so absurd?  We had many delightful dalliances down the romantic groves of chemistry, heart-to-heart talks on metallurgy, and once—­ ah, shall I ever forget it—­ while the dusk gently enfolded us, and I gazed into those bright, speaking, intelligent eyes of his as he bent nearer and nearer; while his low, sonorous voice in well-chosen words pictured to me the promise which fortified cement holds out to the world; that is, ignorant person, Portland cement strengthened by ribs of steel; and I sat listening breathless as his glowing phrases prophesied the future of this combination.”

Katherine closed her eyes, rocked gently back and forth, and crooned, almost inaudibly: 

  “’When you gang awa, Jimmie,
          Faur across the sea, laddie,
    When ye gang to Russian lands
          What will ye send to me, laddie?’

I know what I shall get.  It will probably be a newly discovered recipe for the compounding of cement which will do away with the necessity of steel strengthening.”

“Kate, dear, you are overdoing it.  It is quite right that woman should be a mystery to man, but she should not aspire to become a mystery to her sister woman.  Are you just making fun, or is there something in all this more serious than your words imply?”

“Like the steel strengthening in the cement, it may be there, but you can’t see it, and you can’t touch it, but it makes—­ oh, such a difference to the slab.  Heigho, Dorothy, let us forsake these hard-headed subjects, and turn to something human.  What have your lawyers been bothering you about?  No trouble over the money, is there?”