Vida was serious but affectionate.  She bustled at Carol with, “Oh, there you are, dearie, so glad t’ find you in, sit down, want to talk to you.”

Carol sat, obedient.

Vida fussily tugged over a large chair and launched out: 

“I’ve been hearing vague rumors you were interested in this Erik Valborg.  I knew you couldn’t be guilty, and I’m surer than ever of it now.  Here we are, as blooming as a daisy.”

“How does a respectable matron look when she feels guilty?”

Carol sounded resentful.

“Why——­Oh, it would show!  Besides!  I know that you, of all people, are the one that can appreciate Dr. Will.”

“What have you been hearing?”

“Nothing, really.  I just heard Mrs. Bogart say she’d seen you and Valborg walking together a lot.”  Vida’s chirping slackened.  She looked at her nails.  “But——­I suspect you do like Valborg.  Oh, I don’t mean in any wrong way.  But you’re young; you don’t know what an innocent liking might drift into.  You always pretend to be so sophisticated and all, but you’re a baby.  Just because you are so innocent, you don’t know what evil thoughts may lurk in that fellow’s brain.”

“You don’t suppose Valborg could actually think about making love to me?”

Her rather cheap sport ended abruptly as Vida cried, with contorted face, “What do you know about the thoughts in hearts?  You just play at reforming the world.  You don’t know what it means to suffer.”

There are two insults which no human being will endure:  the assertion that he hasn’t a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.  Carol said furiously, “You think I don’t suffer?  You think I’ve always had an easy——­”

“No, you don’t.  I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told a living soul, not even Ray.”  The dam of repressed imagination which Vida had builded for years, which now, with Raymie off at the wars, she was building again, gave way.

“I was—­I liked Will terribly well.  One time at a party—­oh, before he met you, of course—­but we held hands, and we were so happy.  But I didn’t feel I was really suited to him.  I let him go.  Please don’t think I still love him!  I see now that Ray was predestined to be my mate.  But because I liked him, I know how sincere and pure and noble Will is, and his thoughts never straying from the path of rectitude, and——­If I gave him up to you, at least you’ve got to appreciate him!  We danced together and laughed so, and I gave him up, but——­This is my affair!  I’m not intruding!  I see the whole thing as he does, because of all I’ve told you.  Maybe it’s shameless to bare my heart this way, but I do it for him—­for him and you!”

Carol understood that Vida believed herself to have recited minutely and brazenly a story of intimate love; understood that, in alarm, she was trying to cover her shame as she struggled on, “Liked him in the most honorable way—­simply can’t help it if I still see things through his eyes——­If I gave him up, I certainly am not beyond my rights in demanding that you take care to avoid even the appearance of evil and——­” She was weeping; an insignificant, flushed, ungracefully weeping woman.