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"I guess they'll be eating their lunch, now, at Old Dock Point," said Alice, rising from her knees.

"Well, what d'you think of her, Alice?" Doctor Gregory had asked

"Think you're lucky, Greg," Mrs. Valentine answered earnestly. "You've got a dear, good, lovely wife!"

"If you WILL," their mother said

"It would be a senseless risk to take that baby across the ocean," Alice contributed

"My dear, I don't eat a meal in comfort, the entire time!" Alice said cheerfully. "I mind that more than any other phase!"

"I know, my dear -- haven't I been through it all? Just don't worry, and spare Greg what you can -- "

"You're wonderful!" said Alice one day. "You're not the same woman you were last winter!"

"Goose!" she said tenderly. "You were a nervous wreck last year, and Warren was working far too hard! Make haste slowly, Rachael."

"Nor I -- nor he!" Alice said

"Rachael, don't speak as if the child was dead!" Alice laughed.

"Think of me, with Mary fifteen!" Mrs. Valentine countered, "and just as baby-hungry as ever! But I shall have to do nothing but chaperon now, for a few years, and wait for the grandchildren."

"They all do that!" Alice said cheerfully. "George never remembers mine!"

"You love too hard, my dear woman," Alice Valentine remonstrated affectionately; "nothing is worse than extremes in anything. Say to yourself, like a sensible girl, that you have a good husband, and let it go at that! Be as cool and cheerful with Warren as if he were -- George, for instance, and try to interest yourself in something entirely outside your own home. I wonder if perhaps this place isn't a little lonely for you? Why don't you try Bar Harbor or one of the mountain places next year, and go about among people, and entertain a little more?"

"I know; I hate it, too. But there are funny phases in marriage, Rachael, and one has to take them as they come. Warren might like it."

"I would." Mrs. Valentine rose, and looked toward the beach with an idea of locating Martha and Katrina before sending for them. "Isn't it almost lunch time?" she asked, adding in a matter-of- fact tone: "Don't worry any more, Rachael; it's largely a bad habit. Just look the whole thing in the face, and map it out like a campaign. 'The way to begin living the ideal life is to begin,' my father used to say!"

"Good-night, my darlings! You're going to bed promptly at nine, aren't you, Mary -- and Gogo, too? You know we were all late last night," Alice would say

"Oh, my darling boy, and my darling girl!"

"Mary!"

"What is it to-night, dear?"

"Just Tubby and Sam?"

"But Daddy feels -- "

"Couldn't you just read to-night, my son, or perhaps Mary would play rum with you? Wouldn't that be better, and a long night's sleep, than going over to Sam's EVERY night?"

"Well," said Alice, who had been an absorbed and astounded listener, when she finished, "I confess I don't understand it! If Warren Gregory is making a fool of himself over Margaret Clay, no one is going to be as much ashamed as he is when he is over it. I think with you," Alice added, much in earnest, "that as far as any actual infidelity goes, neither one would be CAPABLE of it! Magsie's a selfish little featherhead, but she has her own advantage too close at heart, and Warren, no matter what preposterous theory he has to explain his interest in Magsie, isn't going to actually do anything that would put him in the wrong!" She paused, but Rachael did not speak, and something in her aspect, as she sat steadily watching the fire, smote Alice to the heart. "I have never been so shocked and so disappointed in my life!" Alice went on, "I can't YET believe it! The only thing you can do is keep quiet and dignified, and wait for the whole thing to wear itself out. This explains the change between George and Warren. I knew George suspected something from the way he tried to shut me up when I saw Warren the other night at the theatre."

"You're so lovely, Rachael," said her friend affectionately. "It doesn't seem right to have anything ever trouble anyone so pretty!"

"What IS it?" asked Alice, anxious eyes upon her husband's kind, homely face. "She's like a person recovering from a blow. She's not sick; but, George, she isn't well!"

"Last week," Alice said not for the first time, "she only spoke of -- of the trouble, you know -- once. We were just going out to dinner, and she turned to me, and said: 'I didn't like my bargain eight years ago, Alice, and I tore my contract to pieces! Now I'll pay for it.'"

"I said, 'Oh, nonsense, Rachael. Don't be morbid! There's no parallel between the cases!'"

"The question is, what is Magsie doing?" said Alice.

"Magsie told her they had talked of marriage!" Alice countered.

"She really isn't the lying type, George. And there's no question that Greg and she did see each other every day, and that he wrote her letters and gave her presents!" Alice finished rather timidly, for her husband's face was a thunder-cloud.

"George, why don't you see him?"

"I should hope he wasn't!" said Alice with spirit.

"We -- ll!"

"Greg is no more a genius than you are, George," argued Alice.

"Innocent!" sniffed Alice. "He'll break Rachael's heart with his innocence, and then he'll marry Magsie Clay -- you'll see!"

"He'll keep out of your way!" Alice predicted confidently. "I know Greg. He has to be perfect or nothing."

"Leave Rachael to me!" Alice said exultingly. "How we'll all laugh at this nonsense some day!"

"Dearest girl, you're morbid!" Alice said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

"Well, perhaps I can be a good mother to them, even if they don't idealize me!" she mused.

"I suppose there are cases of drink or infidelity -- " Alice submitted mildly.

"I think myself that there are not many marriages that couldn't be successes!" Alice said thoughtfully.

"I cannot consider Clarence Breckenridge a loss to society," Alice said.

"I hear that Billy is unhappy enough now," Alice said, pleased at Rachael's unusual vivacity. "Isabella Haviland told my Mary that Cousin Billy was talking about divorce."

"They say she is going on the stage," Alice pursued, "which seems a pity, especially for the child's sake. He's an attractive boy; we saw him with her at Atlantic City last winter -- one of those wonderfully dressed, patient, pathetic children, always with the grown-ups! The little chap must have a rather queer life of it drifting about from hotel to hotel. They're hard up, and I believe most of the shops and hotels have actually black-listed them. He would seem to be the sort of man who cannot hold on to anything, and, of course, there's the drinking! She's not the girl to save him. She drinks rather recklessly herself; it's a part of her pose."

"I don't believe that Warren ever did one-tenth the silly things we suspected him of!" Alice exclaimed one day. "I believe he was just an utter fool, and Magsie took advantage of it!"

"George, you are an absolute WONDER!" said Alice's proud voice, faintly echoed from Clark's Hills. "Now, shall you cable -- anybody- -you know who I mean?"

"Oh, George! And what will he do?"

"Do you THINK so? I don't!"

"And you're an angel," said Mrs. Valentine, finishing the conversation.

"But thousands do it, Rachael."

"I wonder why divorce laws are so little understood?" Alice mused.

"It is only the worth-while women who do understand," said Alice. "You are the marble worth cutting. Life is a series of phases; we are none of us the same from year to year. You are not the same girl that you were when you married Clarence Breckenridge -- "

"Well," said Alice then a little frightened, "why won't you think that perhaps Warren might have changed, too; that whatever Warren has done, it was done more like -- like the little boy who has never had his fling, who gets dizzy with his own freedom, and does something foolish without analyzing just what he is doing?"

"But Warren is in some ways; that's just it," Alice said eagerly. "He has always been singularly -- well, unbalanced, in some ways. Don't you know there was always a sort of simplicity, a sort of bright innocence about Warren? He believed whatever anybody said until you laughed at him; he took every one of his friends on his own valuation. It's only where his work is concerned that you ever see Warren positive, and dictatorial, and keen -- "

"Yes, but that isn't the way to feel toward anybody," persisted Alice. "No man is a god, no man is perfect. You're not perfect yourself; I'm not. Can't you just say to yourself that human beings are faulty -- it may be your form of it to get dignified and sulk, and Warren's to wander off dreamily into curious paths -- but that's life, Rachael, that's 'better or worse,' isn't it?"

"But as you get older," Alice smiled, "you differentiate between good and good, and you see grades in evil, too. Everything isn't all good or all bad, like the heroes and the villains of the old plays. If Warren had done a 'hideously cruel' thing deliberately, that would be one thing; what he has done is quite another. The God who made us put sex into the world, Warren didn't; and Warren only committed, in his -- what is it? -- forty-eighth year one of the follies that most boys dispose of in their teens. Be generous, Rachael, and forgive him. Give him another trial!"

"You two have no quarrel," the older woman added mildly. "You and Warren were rarely companionable. I used to say to George that you were almost TOO congenial, too sensitive to each other's moods. Warren knew that you idolized him, Rachael, and consequently, when criticism came, when he felt that you of all persons were misjudging him, why, he simply flung up his head like a horse, and bolted!"

"Then don't come until Wednesday," suggested Alice.

"Twenty-four hours more, you goose!" Alice laughed.

"I thought you'd rather have him here," said Alice.

"Dearest, why do you sit here!"

"Rachael, it's terrible," said Alice, who was crying hard, "b-b- but they must think there is a chance, dear. We couldn't interrupt them now. He would see you -- there, he's quiet again. That may be all!"