“Oh, don’t try to twist things, she says. Who twisted things this summer…all summer…to make him think me a child? It’s such an interesting thing to watch the man you love making love to another woman and that woman your own sister who is deliberately trying to attract him, just for her own amusement!”

“Rae…never…never! I did try to save you from…from…”

“Save me! From what? You may well hesitate. You know you made him think I cared for Jerry Arnold. Jerry Arnold! A pipsqueak like that! It was Lawrence Wheeler I loved all the time and you knew it. He loved me, too, till you came between us. Yes, he did. The first time we met we felt…we knew…we had loved each other in a thousand former lives.”

For the life of her Pat couldn’t help smiling. She recognized the phrase. Hadn’t Lawrence Wheeler of the soulful eyes said it to her?

“Suppose we talk…or try to…as if we were grown up,” she suggested kindly.

“Oh, but I’m not grown up…I’m only a child.” Rae was pacing feverishly up and down the room. “A child can’t see…can’t love…can’t suffer. Can’t suffer! Oh, what I’ve gone through these past two months! And nobody saw…nobody understood…nobody has ever tried to understand me. You didn’t. You care for nothing but Silver Bush. You acted as you did just because you’re so crazy to keep Silver Bush always the same. My own sister to use me like that!”

Pat lost her patience and her temper, too. The idea of a scene like this over a creature like Larry Wheeler!

“This has gone far enough,” she said frostily.

“I agree with you,” Rae was frost instantly also.

“When you come to your senses,” said Pat, “you’ll realize perhaps just what a goose you’ve made of yourself over a go-preacher with cow’s eyes.”

“Don’t you think you’re really being a little vulgar, my dear Patricia?” said Rae, with eyes of blue ice. “I am of no consequence of course…but there is such a thing as good taste. You seem to have forgotten that, along with several other things. Never mention Lawrence Wheeler’s name to me again.”

Pat clamped her teeth together to keep from saying things she would have been terribly sorry for afterwards. The urge to say them passed.

“We’ve both lost our tempers, Rae, and said foolish things. We’ll feel differently in the morning.”

“Oh, will we? I’ll never feel differently…and I’ll never forgive you, Pat Gardiner…never. You and that old widower of yours!”

“Who is being vulgar now?” Pat was furious again. “At least Mr. Kirk is a gentleman!”

“And Lawrence Wheeler isn’t, I suppose?”