Lydia did not remove her eyes from the other's flushed face. "You must go far away from Bellevue," she said. "You must not take a place anywhere near here." Ellen looked up quickly, and down again. The color slowly died out of her face. After a sullen silence, "Yes," she said. "That is all," said Lydia. * * * * * Paul found his wife that evening still very white. She explained Ellen's disappearance with a dry brevity. "That we should have continued to give that--that awful--to give her opportunity to work upon a boy of--" she ended brokenly. "Suppose he had been my brother!" Paul was aghast. "But, my _dear_! To-morrow is the night of the dinner! Couldn't you have put off a few days this sudden fit of--" Lydia broke from her white stillness with a wild outcry. She flung herself on her husband, pressing her hands on his mouth and crying out fiercely: "No, no, Paul! Not that! I can't bear to have you say that! I hoped--I hoped you wouldn't think of--" Paul was fresh from an interview with Dr. Melton, and in his ears rang innumerable cautions against excitement or violent emotions. With his usual competent grasp on the essentials of a situation that he could not understand at all, he put aside for the time his exasperated apprehensions about the next day's event, and picking Lydia up bodily he carried her to a couch, closing her lips with gentle hands and soothing her with caresses, like a frightened child. "Oh, you are good to me!" she murmured finally, quieted. "I must try not to get so excited. But, Paul--I _can't_ tell you--about--about that letter--and later, when I saw Ellen, it was as though we fought hand to hand for Patsy, though she never--" "There, there, dearest! Don't talk about it--just rest. You've worked yourself into a perfect fever." If there was latent in the indulgent accent of this speech the coda, "All about nothing," it escaped Lydia's ear. She only knew that the long nightmare of her lonely, horrified day was over. She clung to her husband, and thanked heaven for his pure, clean manliness. But in a vastly different way the next day was almost as much of a nightmare. Lydia's father and mother were temporarily out of town and their at least fairly satisfactory cook was enjoying her vacation at an undiscoverable address. Lydia was cut off from asking her sister to come to her aid by the fact that Paul had prevailed upon her to omit Marietta and her husband from her guests. "If you won't give but one, we've just _got_ to invite the important ones," he had said. "Your sister can take dinner with us any day, and you know her husband _isn't_ the most--"