about the human soul. Dr. Carl doesn't even believe in a soul; how could he know anything about it, then?" She frowned in puzzlement and gave up the attempt to solve the mystery.

The hours she had spent in her room, at her mother's insistence, began to pall; she didn't feel particularly ill--it was more of a languor, a depressed, worn-out feeling. Her mother, of course, was out somewhere; she felt a desire for human companionship, and wondered if the Doctor might by some chance drop in. It seemed improbable; he had his regular Sunday afternoon routine of golf at the Club, and it took a real catastrophe to keep him away from that. She sighed, stretched her legs, rose from her position on the chaise lounge, and wandered toward the kitchen where Magda was doubtless to be found.It was in the dusk of the rear hall that the first sense of her loss came over her. Heretofore her renunciation of Nicholas Devine was a rational thing, a promise given but not felt; but now it was suddenly a poignant reality. Nick was gone, she realized; he was out of her world, irrevocably sundered from her. She paused at the top of the rear flight of stairs, considering the matter.

"He's gone! I won't see him ever again." The thought was appalling; she felt already a premonition of loneliness to come, of an emptiness in her world, a lack that nothing could replace.

"I shouldn't have promised Dr. Carl," she mused, knowing that even without that promise her course must still have been the same. "I shouldn't have, not until I'd talked to Nick--my own Nick."

And still, she reflected forlornly, what difference did it make? She had to give him up; she couldn't continue to see him not knowing at what instant that terrible caricature of him might appear to torment her. But he might have explained, she argued miserably, answering her own objection at once--he's said he couldn't explain, didn't understand. The thing was at an impasse.

She shook her shining black head despondently, and descended the dusky well of the stairs to the kitchen. Magda was there clattering among her pots and pans; Pat entered quietly and perched on the high stool by the long table. Old Magda, who had warmed her babyhood milk and measured out her formula, gave her a single glance and continued her work.

"Sorry about the accident, I was," she said without looking up.

"Thanks," responded the girl. "I'm all right again."

"You don't look 

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