"No. But I think you'll be perfectly satisfied with a stupid husband."
"I don't know what makes you so revolting to-day!" complained Pat. "I'd be bored to death with a boob around the house, and you know it. He's not stupid."
"If you're satisfied, I am," said the amiable Bobs. "I don't have to live with him. He's a prize beauty all right. And rich!"
"There you go again. I don't care. (Defiantly) I love Monty, and that's enough. Anyway I didn't come here to talk about him exactly. It's something else. Bobs, do many girls confess to their doctors?"
Osterhout looked up sharply and frowned. Almost word for word Mona had put that same query to him years before. But Pat's face was more child-like, graver, than that of the lovely, laughing, reckless Mona had been.
"Probably more than to their priests," he made reply. "That's what a doctor is for."
"Yes!" she cried eagerly. "Please be just the Fentriss family physician for a few minutes. Make it easy for me, Bobs dear."
Indefinably his manner changed with his next words, became quietly attentive, soothing, almost impersonal as he said: "Take your time, Pat. And when you're ready, tell me as much or as little as you wish."
"It isn't too easy—even to you. Can't you guess?"
"Ah," said he, after a pause of scrutiny. "So that's it."