At least there was one subject on which her parents were in hearty agreement--the first, as far as she could remember, that she had ever found. They did not want her to marry. But, she reflected, as she joggled home alone on the back seat of the school flivver, was it entirely interest in her welfare that made them opposed? Wasn't it rather that they needed her to fill the gap in their lives that their own separation had made? This, she thought, was the real objection to divorce--that it made parents too emotionally dependent on their children. Suppose she died. She considered the possibility steadily. Why, yes, if she died they would probably come together in their grief. She saw a little picture of herself in the infirmary, with her parents standing hand in hand at the foot of the bed. And yet one really could not commit suicide in order to reconcile one's parents. Well, Italy was now out of the question; Italy was canned. She must write to her father immediately that she could not go, and she must do it so as not to make her mother seem selfish, and so as not to hurt her father's feelings. Some letter, she thought. She saw herself walking the deck of an enormous steamer, hanging on his arm, ordering meals in amusing restaurants, the Paris shops gleaming with hats and jewels and beaded bags and fans, all for her. Of course it was natural that she wanted to go.... The car stopped at the door of the main school building, and she sprang out, free at last to give her attention to Aurelia. Strangely enough, though she did not love her friend so much as she did her parents, she worried more about her, as one equal about another. The infirmary, a neat white cottage, was set in a remote corner of the grounds. As Lita bounded up the steps she met Miss Barton coming out. Every head of a school, perhaps every head of an institution, perhaps everyone in the world, acquires an artificial manner to serve as a method of holding off crises. Some adopt the genial, some the meditative, some the stern. Miss Barton had chosen the intellectually airy. As a problem was presented to her she would say "Ah, yes," with a faint, calm smile, as if that special problem were so easy and familiar she might float away to something more stimulating without remembering to give you the answer. She was a tall, good-looking woman, pale eyed, pale skinned, with thick, crinkly gray hair, parted and drawn down to a knot at the nape of her neck; it looked exactly like a wig, but wasn't. She stopped Lita. "Oh," she said with her habitual gay casualness, "we have been looking for you. Don't be alarmed, but it seems that Aurelia has appendicitis." "Yes I felt pretty sure she had," answered Lita. Miss Barton did not think it worth while to contradict this absurd assertion. She merely smiled on one side of her face and replied that the doctors themselves had only decided it fifteen minutes before. It appeared that Aurelia was eager to see her friend before the operation.