This was more or less metaphorical—probably a quotation from Thackeray—because there was no bell in sight. But at any rate Peggy left with one of her goddess-like sweeps, and was to be heard thereafter calling Mr. Logan with a good-will. Presently the others, sitting silently, heard his voice answer gaily, and then no more. They had met and were off together as usual.
"You see," said Marjorie, "he really didn't care for me. I think he and Peggy will marry each other one of these days, even if she is only sixteen."
"She will get over being sixteen, of course," said Francis, still in the preoccupied voice. "I suppose it's her superb vitality that attracts him. She is actually making him almost human."
Marjorie smiled faintly at that.
"You don't like him much, do you?" she said.
"Do you remember, in your letters, how you always called him 'your friend with the fits?'"
"Well, wasn't he?" said Francis defensively.
"Well, I don't think it was fits," she answered, balancing her ideas as if they had met only to discuss Logan; "it was some sort of a nervous seizure. At any rate, Peggy nursed him through one of the attacks, so if she does marry him she knows the worst. But maybe they won't be married. I remember, now, he told me once that an emotion to be really convincing must be only touched lightly and foregone."
"That man certainly talks a lot of rot," said Francis. It was curious how, whenever they were together, they fell into intimate conversation—even if everything in the world had been happening the minute before. The thought came to Marjorie. "Now, my emotions," Francis went on, "have certainly been too darn convincing for comfort for the last year. If I could have touched any of them lightly and foregone them I'd have been so proud you couldn't see me for dust. But they weren't that kind. . . . Marjorie, I've been through hell this last while that you've been sick."
"I'm sorry," she said. It gave her the opening she had been looking for. "But that partly was what I sent for you to talk about. Not hell—I mean—well, our affairs. I'm well enough now to be quite quiet and calm about them, and I think you are, too. That is," she added, half laughing, "if you could ever be quiet and calm about anything. What I've seen of you has either been when you've been repressing yourself so hard that I could see the emotions bubble underneath, or when you'd stopped repressing, and were telling me what you really thought of me."