Pauline herself, fortified by her morning exercises, and by a "double treatment" ($50) from Alvah Loft, had soared once more above her own perplexities. She had not had time for a word alone with her husband since their strange talk of the previous evening; but already the doubts and uncertainties produced by that talk had been dispelled. Of course Dexter had been moody and irritable: wasn't her family always piling up one worry on him after another? He had always loved Jim as much as he did Nona; and now this menace to Jim's happiness, and the unpleasantness about Lita, combined with Amalasuntha's barefaced demands, and the threatened arrival of the troublesome Michelangelo--such a weight of domestic problems was enough to unnerve a man already overburdened with professional cares. "But of course I'll talk to Lita, dear; I always meant to. The silly goose! I've waited only because your father--" Nona's heavy eyebrows ran together like Manford's. "Father?" "Oh, he's helping us so splendidly about it. And he asked me to wait; to do nothing in a hurry..." Nona seemed to turn this over. "All the same--I think you ought to hear what Lita has to say. She's trying to persuade Jim to let her divorce him; and he thinks he ought to, if he can't make her happy." "But he _must_ make her happy! I'll talk to Jim too," cried Pauline with a gay determination. "I'd try Lita first, mother. Ask her to postpone her decision. If we can get her to come to Cedarledge for a few weeks' rest--" "Yes; that's what your father says." "But I don't think father ought to give up his fishing to join us. Haven't you noticed how tired he looks? He ought to get away from all of us for a few weeks. Why shouldn't you and I look after Lita?" Pauline's enthusiasm drooped. It was really no business of Nona's to give her mother advice about the management of her father. These modern girls--pity Nona didn't marry, and try managing a husband of her own! "Your father loves Cedarledge. It's quite his own idea to go there. He thinks Easter in the country with us all will be more restful than California. I haven't influenced him in the least to give up his fishing." "Oh, I didn't suppose you had." Nona seemed to lose interest in the discussion, and her mother took advantage of the fact to add, with a gentle side-glance at her watch: "Is there anything else, dear? Because I've got to go over my Birth Control speech, and at eleven there's a delegation from--" Nona's eyes had followed her glance to the scattered pages on the desk. "Are you really going to preside at that Birth Control dinner, mother?" "Preside? Why not? I happen to be chairman," Pauline answered with a faint touch of acerbity. "I know. Only--the other day you were preaching unlimited families. Don't the two speeches come rather close together? You might expose yourself to some newspaper chaff if any one put you in parallel columns."