Lorraine flushed, thinking all in an instant of how dangerously near she had come to being forever changed, emancipated, as Hortense Quinby would have called it, leaving her fireside untended to pursue phantoms of restless imagination. She smiled in understanding at Thurley as Dan began to say what a splendid overseer Ali Baba made and how good it was to see the old town and surely if Miss Clergy could understand, she would be well pleased with Thurley’s disposal of her fortune. As he talked, he rested his weight first on one foot and then the other, his eyebrows twitching and his hands working together and when Thurley asked as to his own condition, he was brusque almost to rudeness in refusing to consider it of importance. “If I had only got bumped good and proper,” he declared, “I wouldn’t mind, but I hate this sort of air cushion, cruel invaliding of a man.... Of course you can’t understand because you haven’t been into things. It’s the same as a race horse sold to a cabstand and made to trot slowly to the station with a burden of nervous spinsters!” Thurley understood the meaning of his expression and the readjustment he must face. She mercifully let Dan go on his way, while Ali Baba swept down on her to report all that had and had not happened during her absence. Dan and Lorraine walked home that mild November night, Lorraine clinging to his arm until he slouched his shoulder as if the attitude annoyed him. “Does it make you tired?” she asked wistfully. “No, it seems too damned civilized,” he flung back to her dismay. “Why—Dan!” He halted to light a cigar before he tried to explain, then walked with long strides and a slight scuffling of the feet. Lorraine had to half run in order to keep abreast. “Dan, tell me, is there something you are keeping back? I’m brave, I’m really braver than you think, I can understand things, truly, I can, tell me—” She was trying not to cry.