"But it can't go on forever! When is she going back?"
An odd look crossed Mrs. Thayer's face.
"I don't know, Frank; but not for some time—if ever—I should judge, from present indications."
"'If ever'! Good Heavens, Edith, what do you mean?" demanded the doctor, pulling himself up in his chair. "I knew no good would come of this tom-foolishness!"
"There, there, dear, never mind all this now," begged his sister. "Please don't try to talk about it any more."
"But I will talk about it, Edith. I want to know—and you might just as well tell me in the first place, and not hang back and hesitate," protested the doctor, with all the irritability of a naturally strong man who finds himself so unaccountably weak in his convalescence. "What's the trouble? Hasn't that—er—fool-improvement business worked out? Well, I didn't think it would!"
Edith Thayer laughed softly.
"On the contrary, it's working beautifully. Wait till you see her. She's a dear—a very charming woman. She's developed wonderfully. But along with it all has come to her a very deep and genuine, and rather curious, humility, together with a pride, the chief aim of which is to avoid anything like the position in which she found herself as the mortifying, distress-causing wife of Burke Denby."
"Humph!" commented the doctor.
"That Burke doesn't love her, she is thoroughly convinced. To go to him now, tacitly asking to be taken back, she feels to be impossible. She has no notion of going where she isn't wanted; and she feels very sure she isn't wanted by either Burke or his father. Of course the longer it runs, and the longer she stays away, the harder it seems for her to make herself known."