"Jealous! I? Of you, Miss Van Wyck?"

"Don't let's misunderstand again. I'm frightfully cheerful this afternoon. It mightn't happen again for weeks. I couldn't quarrel with fate itself. You did want Jerry to carry your doctrines out into the world with him, didn't you?"

"I'm not aware—"

"And I discovered him far too stodgy to endure. It wasn't so much that your philosophy and mine differed as the difference they made in Jerry. And so we clashed. I won."

I was silent.

"Didn't I, Mr. Canby?" she persisted, in her gentlest tone.

"Jerry is out of my hands, Miss Van Wyck," I managed coolly.

"And in mine?"

"Yes, in yours," after a pause.

She laughed softly.