the street on your two feet when you're so dead tired you could lay down an' let the rest walk over you. Why, lookin' at it from any standpoint-of-view I can't see but it's a grand oppertoonity. An' you're fond of him, ain't you?" "O, yes, I'm very fond of Mr. Van Brandt. But I'm fond of him as a friend. I couldn't--couldn't--couldn't ever marry him." "What for you couldn't? It ain't as if you liked some other fella better! If you liked some other fella better, no matter how little you might think you'd ever get the refusal of'm, I'd say, _stick to the reel article: don't be put of with substitoots_. It ain't no use tryin' to fool your heart. You can monkey with your brain, an' make it believe all sorts of tommyrot, but your heart is dead on to you, an' when it once sets in hankerin' it means business." Claire nodded unseeingly to her own reflection in the glass. "Now _my_ idea is," Martha continued, "my idea is, if you got somethin' loomin', why, don't hide your face an' play it isn't there. There ain't no use standin' on the ragged edge till every tooth in your head chatters with cold an' fright. You don't make nothin' _by_ it. If you love a man like a friend or if you love a friend like a man, my advice is, take your seat in the chair, grip a-holt o' the arms, brace your feet, an'--let'er go, Gallagher! It'll be over in a minit, as the dentists say." "But suppose you had something else on your heart. Something that had nothing to do with--with that sort of thing?" Claire asked. "What sorter thing?" "Why--love. Suppose you'd done something unworthy of you. Suppose the sense of having done it made you wretched, made you want to make others wretched? What would you do--then?" "Now, my dear, don't you make no mistake. I ain't goin' to be drew into no blindman's grab-bag little game, not on your sweet life. I ain'ter goin' to risk havin' you hate me all the rest o' your nacherl life becoz, to be obligin' an' also to show what a smart boy am I, I give a verdick without all the everdence in. If you wanter tell me plain out what's frettin' you, I'll do my best accordin' to my lights, but otherwise--" "Well--" began Claire, and then followed, haltingly, stumblingly, the story of her adventure in the closet. "At first I felt nothing but the wound to my pride, the sting of what he--of what _they_ said," she concluded. "But, after a little, I began to realize there was something else. I began to see what _I_ had done. For, you know, I had deliberately listened. I needn't have listened. If I had put my hands over my ears, if I had crouched back, away from the door, and covered my head, I need not have overheard. But I pressed as close as I could to the panel, and hardly breathed, because I wanted not to miss a word. And I didn't miss a word. I heard what it was never meant I should hear, and--I'm nothing but a common--_eavesdropper_!" "Now, what do you think of that?" observed Mrs. Slawson. "Now, what do you think of that?"