"She's a good girl, Lucy."
"That's not the point, is it?"
"Do you think she cares for him?"
"I don't know. There's some talk of Wallie Sayre. He's there a good bit."

"Wallie Sayre!" snorted David. "He's never done a day's work in his life and never will." He reflected on that with growing indignation. "He doesn't hold a candle to Dick. Of course, if the girl's a fool--"

Hands thrust deep into his pockets David took a turn about the room. Lucy watched him. At last:
"You're evading the real issue, David, aren't you?"
"Perhaps I am," he admitted. "I'd better talk to him. I think he's got an idea he shouldn't marry. That's nonsense."
"I don't mean that, exactly," Lucy persisted. "I mean, won't he want a good many things cleared up before he marries? Isn't he likely to want to go back to Norada?"
Some of the ruddy color left David's face. He stood still, staring at her and silent.
"You know he meant to go three years ago, but the war came, and--" Her voice trailed off. She could not even now easily recall those days when Dick was drilling on the golf links, and that later period of separation.
"If he does go back--"
"Donaldson is dead," David broke in, almost roughly.
"Maggie Donaldson is still living."
"What if she is? She's loyal to the core, in the first place. In the second, she's criminally liable. As liable as I am."
"There is one thing, David, I ought to know. What has become of the Carlysle girl?"
"She left the stage. There was a sort of general conviction she was implicated and--I don't know, Lucy. Sometimes I think she was." He sighed. "I read something about her coming back, some months ago, in 'The Valley.' That was the thing she was playing the spring before it happened." He turned on her. "Don't get that in your head with the rest."
"I wonder, sometimes."
"I know it."

Outside the slamming of an automobile door announced Dick's return, and almost immediately Minnie rang the old-fashioned gong which hung in the lower hall. Mrs. Crosby got up and placed a leaf of lettuce between the bars of the birdcage.
"Dinner time, Caruso," she said absently. Caruso was the name Dick had given the bird. And to David: "She must be in her thirties now."
"Probably." Then his anger and anxiety burst out. "What difference can it make about her? About Donaldson's wife? About any hangover from that rotten time? They're gone, all of them. He's here. He's safe and happy. He's strong and fine. That's gone."

In the lower hall, Dick was taking off his overcoat. "Smell's like chicken, Minnie," he said, into the dining room. "Chicken and biscuits, Mr. Dick."
"Hi, up there!" he 

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