Cecily hesitated, then sighed rather wearily. “Oh, I don’t know. I thought not--but--I don’t know. He’s made me despise him; he’s robbed me of every illusion about him; I see him, and have long seen him--just as he is. Now he has insulted me in a way that’s so ludicrously unjust that I----” She laughed again. “That’s all one can do--laugh. And yet----” She stopped. “Yes?” said Rose again. “Yet I feel bound to him,” declared Cecily, slowly. “Not in any sort of legal way, of course, but just so that I can’t help myself. When he looks tired, or worried, or disappointed--and he so often looks all of them--my heart aches. I want to comfort him. It’s just as though he were my child, you know, my silly, naughty little boy.” She smiled to herself, quietly. “Cis!” exclaimed Rose, involuntarily. “How you have grown up!” “Grown up? I have grown old. Hundreds of years old.” The last words were uttered as though to herself. For some time neither of them spoke. “What are you going to do about Dick?” asked Rose at last. Cecily turned her head in surprise. “Do about him?” “People are talking, you know. I heard it last year when I was in town, and, indirectly, once or twice since.” “Are you thinking of Robert?” There was a note of contemptuous amusement in her voice. “Not at all. Of you.” “Then don’t trouble, dear. People will continue to talk. But as long as I don’t fizzle out, they’ll also continue to ask me to their parties.” “And is there no danger--of anything else?” persisted Rose. “Of my falling in love with Dick, you mean? Not the slightest.” “Then you wouldn’t mind if he went off exploring again?” Cecily started. “Yes, I should,” she returned, quickly. “I couldn’t _bear_ it.” “Why?” “Why?” She looked at her friend in bewilderment. “Because of everything. Because of---- Why, he’s made everything possible. My book--all the people I’ve got to know. I was all to pieces when Dick came home. He put me together again, and stood me on my two feet, and----” “And yet you are in no danger.” Cecily looked at her a full moment without speaking, and it was Rose who again broke the silence. “My dear, when a woman relies on a man like that, when she can’t picture life without him, there is always danger.” “If you only knew,” began Cecily, leaning forward and speaking impressively, “if you only knew how thankful I am to be _out_ of love. To have peace, to have freedom, to have found myself again. It’s just what I said. It’s just as though I had stepped out of hell, to find the blue sky over my head, and the grass underfoot, and the flowers everywhere, all the dear, beautiful, natural things--that never hurt one.” “I know,” said Rose. “But that’s just a phase, Cis--a reaction. Don’t think you’re done with love because you dread it. You’re young. You have tremendous vitality. Look at yourself now in the glass, and think what you were two years ago. You’re not the sort of woman for whom things are very easily over.”