He nodded at the various points in her recital, blinking at her searchingly out of his kind old eyes.
"You look pale," he said, "and old. You look forty."
She surprised him by saying, with a sudden outburst: "Cousin Rodney, do you think it's any harm for a woman to marry one man when she's in love with another?" Before he had time to recover himself, she followed this question with a second. "Do you think it's possible for a person to be in love with two people at the same time?"
He understood now the real motive of her visit.
"I'm not a very good judge of love affairs," he said, after a minute's reflection. "But one thing I know, and it's this—that when we do our duty we don't have to bother with the question as to whether it's any harm or not."
"We may do our duty, and still make people unhappy."
"No; not unless we do it in the wrong way."
"So that if I feel that to go on and keep my word is the right thing—or rather the only thing—?"
"That settles it, dearie. The right thing is the only thing—and it makes for everybody's happiness."
"Even if it seems that it—it couldn't?"