“Oh, no, I don’t think I am as intense as you are—but what do you suppose makes Beverly such a wild animal? We are none of us like that, and never have been, as far as I know, although some of the old boys were pretty gay, not to say lawless. But for two or three generations we seem to have been a fairly well-conducted lot. Beverly is almost a freak.” Patience crossed the room, and lifting down a volume of Darwin’s “Descent of Man” read from the chapter on Civilised Nations:— “‘With mankind some of the worst dispositions which occasionally, without any assignable cause, make their appearance in families, may perhaps be reversions to a savage state from which we are not removed by very many generations.’” VII Two weeks later Patience received a letter from Hal which induced no surprise. The die is cast [it read]. Reginald Wynne has gone back to Boston, and I am going to marry Latimer Burr. On the first of April we sail for Europe—mamma and May and I—to get our things. Don’t imagine that I am doing the novel-heroine act, and sprinkling my pillow o’ nights. I did feel terribly, and I’ll never love any other man; but the thing is done, and done for the best, and that is the end of it. What you said about following along the line of least resistance is as sure as love and fate and a good many other things; for what Latimer Burr can give me I want more than what Reginald Wynne can give me, and it drew me like a magnet. And the other thing you said is equally true,—that the only joy in life is to pursue your ideals to the bitter end. Mine are not lofty, but they are _me_, and that is all there is to it. I shall not weep it out, because I’ve no beauty to lose, and weeping does no earthly good, anyway. If it would give Wynne Burr’s fortune I’d drown New York. We’ll be back on the first of June. We’re only going over to order things. I wish you joy of Honora. It’s too bad Bev is so much in love with you, or you might switch him off on to her. Oh, Patience, dear, you don’t know how much I’ve thought about you. It hurts me _hard_ to think that you are unhappy. I feel as guilty as a murderer, but really I thought you’d get along. So many women had been in love with Bev, I thought you would be, too. I don’t think it had ever occurred to me that women sometimes had a soul. If I had known as much then as I do now I’d have done all I could to keep you apart, for Beverly Peele certainly has not the attenuated ghost of a soul.