paring to leave, and while Paul was on the porch putting new laces in his skating boots he overheard their final remarks.
"But your nerves will have to pay for it in the end," the doctor was expostulating. "Neuralgia will then be the very least of your troubles. There's no such thing in nature as utter inflexibility."
"Nuns fret not at their convents' narrow room," Aunt Verona commented in a brittle tone.
"Ah, but you do fret without knowing it. It's like bleeding inwardly. Besides, you're the last woman who should ever have dreamed of turning your back on life."
"I gave it a trial."
"Not a fair one. You dived into a shallow pool, stunned yourself, then concluded that the pool had been deep and that you had been stunned through incompetent diving—which is grossly unjust to yourself. Since then, by disdaining little pools and shrinking from big ones, you've shirked the issues of life. Be warned while there's still time."
When Paul returned from skating two or three hours later, he paused at the gate, thinking he had heard the sound of a piano. But he doubted his ears, for they tingled from the cold wind on the frozen marsh ponds, and the sound might have been a distant sleigh-ball or the clinking of skates slung over his shoulder. He hurried down the icy board-walk to the kitchen door, stood still a moment to listen, then though the window saw Aunt Verona lighting the lamp.
It was Friday night and he had to hurry through supper in order not to be late for choir practice. He was tired after the afternoon's exercise and would have preferred to sit at home with a book. He could play the silly anthems at sight and resented the necessity of going over and over the separate parts to accommodate tenors and contraltos whose musicianship was of the hit-or-miss
