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, her reactions are all so potent to bring great unhappiness. She will either be very happy when she comes face to face with life, or frightfully miserable. There’s no middle road for Lydia.”

“Poor child! She hasn’t been herself for weeks.”

“Something’s on her mind. She acts as if something were preying on her. Heaven only knows what sort of a mess she’s capable of getting herself into.”

“Most of Lydia’s troubles are imaginary,” Mary said practically.

Craig shook his head. “No…. Perhaps she imagines herself into trouble sometimes—but there’s a fine, strong woman buried in Lydia somewhere. There’s a bigness about her, even when she’s most headstrong. There’s a fineness about her. She’s the wonderful or the foolish sort who would submit to boiling in oil for an ideal…. The devil of it is that the ideal might be an absurdity.”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Mary. “I believe she wants to break her engagement with Mal. I think she leaped into it without looking, and now she’s terrified at the prospect.”

Lydia was terrified at the prospect. She had arrived at a point where she abhorred the thought of giving herself to Malcolm; where she