“All right. Bring her round and I’ll look her over,” said I carelessly. And I forced a change of subject. Had Mary Kirkwood been taking this agreeable, insidious doctor into her confidence? I did not know. I do not know. I have reasons for thinking he told the literal truth. And yet--women are queer about doctors. However, that’s a small matter. The thing that impressed me, that agitated me as he talked, was the picture he, by implication, was making of Mary Kirkwood, alone again, and evidently absolutely unattached--living alone in the country as when I first knew her. I tossed and fretted away most of the hours of that night with the result that at breakfast I resolved to leave town again, to put the width of the continent or of the ocean between me and temptation to folly. But one thing and another came up to detain me. It was perhaps ten days later that I, walking alone in the Park, as was my habit, found myself at a turning face to face with her. I don’t think my expression reflected credit upon my boasted self-control. As for her--I thought she was going to faint--and she is not one of the fainting kind. We gazed at each other in fright and embarrassment, and both had the same child’s impulse to turn and fly--one, of those sensible, natural instincts for the shortest way out of difficult situations that the cowardly conventionality of the grown-up estate makes it impossible to obey. But--we had to do something. So, we laughed. She put out her hand; I took it. “How well you are looking,” said I--and it was the truth. “You, too,” said she. I turned to walk with her. We strolled along cheerfully and contentedly, talking of the early spring, of flowers, and birds, and such neutral matters. I was fluent, she no less so. Our agitation disappeared; our sense of congeniality returned. Our acquaintance seemed to have lumped back to where it was before we had that first confidential talk together on the yacht. After perhaps an hour, as agreeable an hour as I ever spent, she said she must go home, as she had an engagement. On the way to the Sixty-fifth Street entrance the conversation lagged somewhat. We were both busily resolving the same thing--the matter of explanations. Now that I was seeing her again--a wholly different matter from inspecting my defaced and smirched and battered image of her--battered by the blows of my jealousy, and anger, and scorn--now that I was seeing _her_ again, I could not but see and feel that she was in reality a sweet and simple and attractive woman. No doubt she had her faults--as all of us have--grave faults of inheritance, of education, of environment. But who was I that I should sit in judgment on her? I realized that I had judged her unjustly so far as her treatment of me was concerned. Assuming that she was tainted with snobbishness, assuming that her defects were as bad as I had thought in my worst paroxysms, still that did not alter the charms and the fine qualities. “We are friends?” said I abruptly.