"I can't. That wasn't a climb. 'Twas a scramble. Bad work. But I'm
out of practice."
"You mustn't stay. Grandmother wouldn't like it. Remember, she forbade
my having anything to do with you."
"Sorry, but I don't feel obliged to conform, on that account. If _you_
don't like it, that's another story."
Katherine was silent.
Dr. Ballard did not press the point.
"You said you had something to tell me."
"On second thought I'll postpone it."
"Why?"
"The moonlight suggests mystery. Let's leave it a mystery."
"I hate mysteries."
"As I diagnose your case, you're by way of 'hating' most things,
nowadays. Come. Confess. Aren't you?"
Katherine nodded mutely.
"Don't do it," advised Dr. Ballard.
"I can't help it," she burst out with quite uncharacteristic
impetuosity. "So much in life is hateful. Sometimes, I feel one isn't
bound to endure things, when they make one so detestable. I was
thinking about it just before you came. Thinking about the sort of
thing life can make of one. Everything one oughtn't to be. I hate
_myself_, along with all the rest."
Dr. Ballard sat with his hands clasped around his knees, and gazed
straight up above him into the great stretch of dusky sky, spangled over
with constellations.
"I wonder what Mrs. Slawson would say to that?" he ruminated.