Lydia rose in silence and began pinning on her hat. Her sister, for all her vexation over the ending of the interview, could hardly repress a smile of superior wisdom at the other's face of tragedy. "Don't go, Lyddie, don't go!" She tried to put her arms around the flighty young thing. "Oh, dear Lydia, cultivate your sense of humor! That's all that's the matter with you. There's nothing else! Look here, dear, there _are_ moths as well as souls in the world. People have to be on the lookout for them,--for everything, don't you see?" "They look out for _moths_, all right," said Lydia in a low tone. She submitted, except for this one speech, in a passive silence to her sister's combination of petting and exhortation, moving quietly toward the door, and stepping evenly forward down the walk. She had gone down to the street, leaving Mrs. Mortimer still calling remorseful apologies, practical suggestions, and laughing comments on her "tragedy way of taking the world." At the gate, she paused, and then came back, her face like a mask under the shadow of her hat. Marietta stood waiting for her with a quizzical expression. Under her appearance of lightly estimating Lydia's depression as superficial, she had been sensible of a not unfamiliar qualm of doubt as to her own manner of life, an uneasy heaving of a subconscious self not always possible to ignore; but, as was her resolute custom, she forced to the front that perception of the ridiculous which she had urged on her sister. She bit her lips, to conceal a smile at Lydia's mournful emphasis as she went on: "I forgot to tell you, Marietta, what I was sent over for. You're to be sure to order the perforated candles. It's the kind that has holes down the middle, so the wax doesn't look mussy on the outside, and it's very, very important to have the right kind of candles." Mrs. Mortimer, willfully amused, looked with an obstinate smile into her sister's troubled eyes as Lydia hesitated, waiting, in spite of herself, for the understanding word. "You're a darling, Lyddie," said the elder woman, kissing her again; "but you are certainly _too_ absurd!" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BOOK III A SUITABLE MARRIAGE CHAPTER XVIII TWO SIDES TO THE QUESTION