suppose that's it? Oh, it can't be! She wouldn't chuck dad for that
doughboy piano tuner. Not Paula!"

"Oh, no," said Mary. "She wouldn't do that. It wouldn't look to her like
that, anyhow. She's got enough, don't you see, for everybody; for dad
and--and the doughboy as well. Father wouldn't have any less, if he could
just make up his mind that he didn't have to have it all. And as for the
other, why, it might be the greatest thing that could possibly happen to
him;--being in love with Paula and writing operas for her and having her
sing them the way she sang those songs to-night. I suppose that's what a
genius needs. And you couldn't blame her exactly. At least there always
have been people like that and the world hasn't blamed them--no matter
how moral it pretends to be. It's the other sort of people, the ones who
won't take anything unless they can have it all and who can't give
anything unless they can give it all--those that haven't but one thing to
give--that are--no good."

He didn't more than half understand her, which was fortunate, since he
was rather horrified as it was. He put it down broadly as the same sort
of nervous crisis that he had encountered in New York, a sort of
hypersensitiveness due to the strain of war work--the thing he had amused
her by speaking of as shell-shock.

"I think perhaps I know what has upset you to-night," he said
uncomfortably. "At least Graham told me about it."

She looked at him with a puzzled frown. It was the third time that he had
brought up the Stannard boy's name. What in the world...?

"He's terribly distressed about it," Rush went on. In his embarrassment