Clearly Madelene's keen, pretense-scattering gaze was not one to invite to inspect a matter which might not look at all well stripped of its envelopes of phrase and haze.

She wished she had not come; indeed, she had been half-wishing it during the whole three-quarters of an hour of watching and thinking on Madelene's wonderful life, so crowded with interest, with achievement, with all that Hiram Ranger's daughter called, and believed, "the real thing." "Nothing, nothing at all," replied she to Madelene's question.

"I just dropped in to annoy you with my idle self--or, maybe, to please you.

You know we're taught at church that a large part of the joy of the saved comes from watching the misery of the damned." But Madelene had the instinct of the physician born.

"She has something on her mind and wants me to help her," she thought.