“But you and I are intellectually congenial, Harry!”

“We weren’t when we married. We’ve developed along the same lines since, that’s all. But it was passion that melted us up and made our mental and spiritual amalgamation a reality. We only thought we were congenial, those early days, because we wanted each other so desperately.”

“Even if you’re right,” Cynthia said quickly, “it mightn’t turn out with Lewis and Petra as it has with us. I don’t see how it could. She’s so shallow.”

“Of course nobody knows how it will turn out ever. But if they’re drawn to each other by mere—mere—what was it you said they were drawn by? I don’t remember—but what you meant was mere cosmic forces—I guess you’ll have to let that attraction take its course, and remain a mere sister who hasn’t a thing to say. Sorry, darling. But you annoy me, rather.” He kissed her, all the same, as if that was what he had come back for.

Cynthia had guessed right. Lewis was really headed for Green Doors, intending only to dine with the Allens en route. He told Cynthia and Harry about his summons to New York and gave them a dramatic account of the latest methods in the treatment of infantile paralysis, but he was careful to wait until the children were safely out of earshot. Little Michael Duffield was going to get well and the probability was that he would suffer no permanent disability from his terrible experience. The other Duffield children had been packed off to the shore in charge of tutors and with a trained nurse to watch for symptoms. They had gone off in two large cars and were living in an isolated cottage to meet all the requirements of quarantine. But Mrs. Duffield herself was staying with her adopted boy and would not join the others until he was well enough to be taken with her, unless one of her own children developed the disease.

“There is almost no limit to what modern science can do, with wealth to back it up,” Cynthia commented.

But Lewis met this with silence. He had just been through a twenty-four-hour agonizing suspense, when all that science had to give, and all that wealth could buy, and even all that love could plead, had waited on—a Mystery. And the Mystery, over and over, during those dread hours, had been named by Mrs. Duffield, “God’s Will.” Lewis’ face was strained and his eyes still heavy from watching.

The Allens were a little embarrassed by the way Lewis had taken the business; but they were touched as well. They knew how peculiarly devoted to this little Michael he was. Cynthia was glad, indeed, that she herself had not known that the boy was so ill all these past days, and Lewis with him. That would have worried her for her brother’s sake infinitely more than this Petra business was worrying her. Petra fears, in fact, had dwindled, in the face of all that Lewis had just told them, into mere goblin phantoms.

But even so she remarked, “It’s funny, but do you know, I don’t believe Clare knows you’ve been away any more than we did. Petra couldn’t have told them. And what’s still more inexplicable, Petra has gotten home late every evening and hardly has time to dress for dinner. Clare rather implied that you were overworking her, keeping her such unconscionable hours! And all the time you haven’t been there at all!”

Lewis’ eyelids just flickered but he gave no other sign. He had told Miss Frazier by telephone this morning that he would take an afternoon train and be at the office at the usual time to-morrow morning. But Mrs. Duffield had persuaded him to fly instead, and that swift and luxurious way of travel had brought him to Boston late this afternoon. He had dropped around at the office and found Miss Frazier still there. She had sent Petra home early, she said, because of the heat; and the other afternoons she had let Petra catch the three-forty express for Meadowbrook, thinking there was so little need for two of them with the doctor away.—What was the mystery? Why need Petra be so devious, Lewis asked himself. But he was glad he had been warned. Very glad. He might so easily have betrayed her to-night, later, at Green Doors.

It was dark when Lewis drove up the Green Doors road and recognized Dick’s car standing before the door. He was taken to the library, after having sent in his name and been left waiting a minute or two in the hall. The maid who had admitted him had seemed none too sure that any one was at home. He realized the reason for her caution when he saw what his visit was interrupting. Lowell Farwell was reading aloud from his own manuscript. Clare was picturesquely erect in a corner of the divan, working on a brilliant square of needlepoint. Dick lounged and smoked a briar pipe beside her, looking rather romantic, young and very handsome. The author himself sat facing them, his hands full of canary-colored scratch paper.—Lewis was, had he known it, the sole person who would have been allowed to interrupt the reading.

He was welcomed warmly. Clare’s inward smile indeed was as brilliant, as warm, as that on her lips and in her eyes. So soon! She had given Doctor Pryne two or three weeks before he would allow himself to return—and here he was back within the week! Doctor Lewis Pryne! The inaccessible! The unobtainable! It was more than gratifying. It was—exciting and delightful....

“Too bad Petra isn’t at home,” she said at once. “She won’t like missing you. But she said there was extra work to-night and she would have supper somewhere with Miss Frazier and then get back to it. I thought you must be there in person, cracking the slave whip, Doctor. Awfully nice to have you here instead!”

This time, because he was prepared, Lewis did not so much as blink. “No, it wasn’t necessary for me to stay. But I am interrupting. You shouldn’t have been ‘at home.’”

Lowell Farwell was putting away the manuscript. “Nothing of the kind,” he exclaimed. “I can read to Clare any time. Dick came to play with Petra and I did the ancient mariner turn with him; so he won’t mind my stopping. It isn’t every day I get a chance to talk with a genuine psychologist. If I hadn’t gone in for writing, Doctor Pryne, I should be in your field. Do you, by the way, read Dostoevsky? The Russians know a thing or two. They aren’t afraid of turning to the findings of morbid psychology for suggestion, at least, in their studies of human character....”

It was sometime after ten when Petra let herself softly in at the front door. The library door had been left open after Lewis’ interruption of the reading and she heard voices. Dick’s. Her father’s. If Lewis had happened to speak as she crossed the hall, she would never have gone on and in. She would have stolen away to bed and sent a maid to tell Clare she was at home. It was too late to retreat when she saw Lewis. Her face hardened as she came forward. So Clare had won. They had not known at the office—she and Miss Frazier—that Doctor Pryne had even returned, and yet here he was the first hour he was back, sitting beside her stepmother, helping her wind up a ball of yarn. But it was stupid to be so surprised. Hadn’t she known ever since Saturday evening that Clare had Doctor Pryne in tow! If it were not so, he would never have betrayed Petra’s confidences to her as he had done.

Clare entranced every one, of course,—except Petra herself. But Saturday afternoon, when Doctor Pryne had walked with Petra across to the guest-house piazza and sat there, listening to the bobolink, and Petra had been moved to be herself with him, and even to talk about Teresa, she had thought that Doctor Pryne would be the one exception to the general rule. He would be her friend—Petra’s—not Clare’s. He would see through Clare. He belonged to herself and Teresa. That meeting, long ago in the Cambridge apartment, had made him belong. Or rather they had been deceived—and thought so. Where had the idea come from, anyway? Teresa had been as illusioned as Petra herself. And when he held her chair for her at Clare’s tea table—and even more, while she sat silent beside him, and could not make herself eat or drink because it was so wonderful that he had come at last—Petra had known that he understood her and was close to her in some indefinable but real way. She had known but she had known a lie. It was an illusion brought away out of childhood; and she had been enticed from her secret fastness by it, the fastness where she hid from Clare and all of the life here at Green Doors.

Doctor Pryne was holding a chair for her at this minute as he had held the chair under the elm. The same look was on his face. If she did not watch out, she would be betrayed by it into sincerity again, into being simply herself.

“Darling! You should have called up from the station. I’d have sent a car for you. I suppose you came in a taxi. I didn’t hear it. I was beginning to worry, really. Here’s Elise with punch. You’re just in time, Elise. We are famished. Petra, you do look tired. Pass them to Miss Farwell first, Elise. Darling, you don’t look tired, you look exhausted.”

Clare was justified in the observation. Petra’s face was shadowed by obvious weariness, and Lewis thought that her long, sun-burned fingers held the stem of her goblet of punch with a counterfeit steadiness. Sheer will was keeping her steady—and hard. He was certain of it.

Lewis himself did not sit down again. He said that he must go. It would be midnight as it was when he got to his rooms, and work would be piled sky-high to-morrow after his absence. But he did not say this. They were not to know that he had been away and not seen his office for several days, since Petra had not told them. And if the child was fearful that he had already explained that he had never kept her working over hours, he would relieve her mind at once. But how?

He said, as casually as he could, “No need to be on time to-morrow, Petra. Mrs. Farwell thinks I’m a slave driver and it will be true unless we call a halt. After this, your hours are to be from nine till four, as we first agreed, and an hour out for lunch.”

Petra was quick to understand. So they had told him! He knew about her lies! But he had not given her away and was not doing so now. That was strange. Why? And it seemed almost as if he were promising her, indirectly, that he had no intention of giving her away at all. At the same time, he was laying a command on her: she must not use this particular excuse ever again to gain her private ends, whatever they were. Oh, yes, Petra thought she understood, and humiliation drowned what might have been gratitude.

As for Lewis, he had never known that young eyes could hold such dumb, repressed misery as he saw in those that Petra slowly raised to his own, when she returned his formal “good night” with one more formal. But he had only meant to reassure her. Did she think he was taunting or judging? It was intolerable that she should have any such idea. It was intolerable that he should have wounded her and that he could not explain himself to her to-night, before she slept. But could he explain himself to her to-morrow? Could he explain himself to himself, if it came to that? Did he know why he was not appalled by this girl’s deceit and why he was not angry with her for having put him in an unfair position by her lies? If he had only been self-disciplined enough, sensible enough, to have waited until morning to see Petra! Now the night was going to be much longer than it would have been had he never come out here at all. And he had thought to have shortened it by coming!

Lowell Farwell accompanied Lewis out to the street door, insisting again, as they crossed the spaces of the great hall, that he would never know all about morbid psychology until he had made a thorough study of the Russian novelist, Dostoevsky,—and, possibly, a few other even more modern writers of psychological novels. For your novelist knew intuitively what your psychologist only came at through experiment, and he knew it first.

“Yes, read the great novelists,” Farwell advised Lewis, with an almost passionate insistence. “Read Thomas Mann. Read Hardy. And above all read Dostoevsky. Then you might even read some Americans. There are one—or two—you know—”

Lewis got away quickly without admitting the fact that he knew his Dostoevsky practically by heart. Somehow, he hoped he would never have to hear Farwell patronizing that master or comparing his novels to his own, even by implication. Lewis wanted not to detest Petra’s father.