ing the object, he has run away from her. . . . That makes it serious."
Ellen, mute and frightened by the frankness of the older woman, sat awkwardly, like a little girl, regarding her. Surely she had never heard any one talk in quite this fashion . . . so honestly and yet so calmly. In a moment like this she had expected anger, even denunciation; she had prepared herself for it.
"I don't know what is to be done about it . . ." continued Mrs. Callendar, "because I don't know everything. . . . In a case like this, one must know everything in order to make sense. You have done something to him. I don't blame you. . . . It is simply one of those things which happens. . . . I fancy if you had not met each other as you did, you would have met in some other fashion. . . ." Her green eyes narrowed and her lips contracted so that all her plumpness appeared to shrivel and vanish. She seemed suddenly to become vastly old and wizened. "Yes, I am sure you would have met. Nothing could have kept you apart." And then, plump and kindly once more, she said, "I don't know what it is you have done to him. I don't fancy he knows himself, but he's miserable. . . . You see, the trouble is that he is really romantic . . . just as I am romantic . . . and he's always pretended he was an experienced, cynical homme du monde. . . . In that one thing he is dishonest."
She reached over and in an unexpected gesture touched the hand of the girl so that Ellen, taken unaware by this movement of sympathy, began to cry softly.
"I am romantic," said Mrs. Callendar softly, "though you might not believe it. Listen!" She leaned forward. "Listen! I'll tell you a story about myself and you'll see. You'll understand then perhaps that I have sympathy enough to be of use in this matter . . . because in a time of this sort, it's sympathy that's needed more than anything else."
And then she settled back and between puffs on her cigarette related bit by bit, from the very beginning, the romantic story of her elopement with Richard Callendar's father. She told the
