Chapter 26

"This can't go on. We must do something--at once."

They were in the music room, Paula at the piano, her face turned up to Graham who stood close to her, almost over her.

"You must decide," Graham continued.

Neither face showed happiness in the great thing that had come upon them, now that they considered what they must do.

"But I don't want you to go," Paula urged. "I don't know what I want. You must bear with me. I am not considering myself. I am past considering myself. But I must consider Dick. I must consider you. I... I am so unused to such a situation," she concluded with a wan smile.

"But it must be settled, dear love. Dick is not blind."

"What has there been for him to see?" she demanded. "Nothing, except that one kiss in the canyon, and he couldn't have seen that. Do you think of anything else--I challenge you, sir."

"Would that there were," he met the lighter touch in her mood, then immediately relapsed. "I am mad over you, mad for you. And there I stop. I do not know if you are equally mad. I do not know if you are mad at all."

As he spoke, he dropped his hand to hers on the keys, and she gently withdrew it.

"Don't you see?" he complained. "Yet you wanted me to come back?"

"I wanted you to come back," she acknowledged, with her straight look into his eyes. "I wanted you to come back," she repeated, more softly, as if musing.

"And I'm all at sea," he exclaimed impatiently. "You do love me?"

"I do love you, Evan--you know that. But..." She paused and seemed to be weighing the matter judicially.

"But what?" he commanded. "Go on."

"But I love Dick, too. Isn't it ridiculous?"

He did not respond to her smile, and her eyes delightedly warmed to the boyish sullenness that vexed his own eyes. A thought was hot on his tongue, but he restrained the utterance of it while she wondered what it was, disappointed not to have had it.

"It will work out," she assured him gravely. "It will have to work out somehow. Dick says all things work out. All is change. What is static is dead, and we're not dead, any of us... are we?"

"I don't blame you for loving Dick, for... for continuing to love Dick," he answered impatiently. "And for that matter, I don't see what you find in me compared with him. This is honest. He is a great man to me, and Great Heart is his name--" she rewarded him with a smile and nod of approval. "But if you continue to love Dick, how about me?"

"But I love you, too."

"It can't be," he cried, tearing himself from the piano to make a hasty march across the room and stand