"Poor, poor Vick!" Isabelle sighed. "He ought to leave that creature."

"He won't; Vick was the kind that the world sells cheap,—it's best kind. He lives the dream and believes his shadows; it was always so. It will be so until the end. Life will stab him at every corner."

"Dear, dear Vick!" Isabelle said softly; "some days I feel as if I would have done as he did."

"But fortunately there is John to puncture your dream with solid fact."

"John even might not be able to do it! … I am going over to see Vick this summer."

"Wouldn't that make complications—family ones?"

Isabelle threw up her head wilfully.

"Dickie, I think there is something in me deeper than my love for John or for the child,—and that is the feeling I have about Vick!"

Fosdick looked at her penetratingly.

"You ought not to have married, Isabelle."