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“It’s pure madness!” she answered in a low tone. “Madness! I—I———Oh, why need we speak of it? It’s over now—finished! I’m just a fool trying to run away from myself! Just a fool!”

She lifted her head abruptly and gazed out of the window.

Buzzy noted that her lips were trembling and her eyes filling with tears. She gazed at the tea-pot in her turn.

“That’s rotten,” she admitted. “As Omar Khayyam remarked in 1874, ‘That’s decidedly umpty-do!’”

“Oh, it’s right that you should laugh, Buzzy———”

“I’m not laughing, my dear. You know that. I’m just mighty sorry for you, and darned glad I dropped on you this afternoon. You can tell me about it, or you needn’t; but I’m the tonic you need, Pat; and you’re going to get enough of me to set you on your feet again.”

The big woman folded her arms upon the table and leaned forward, the cigarette drooping from a corner of her lips.

“I’ve made a diagnosis of your case, Miss Weybourn,” she continued. “You are suffering with a bad attack of love.”

Patricia turned her head sharply. Her eyes narrowed.

“So, I’m talked about here, too?” she asked angrily. “I’m a high-light in a national scandal?”

“Now you’re being conceited, my dear. Nobody but little Buzzy has ever heard of you down here. Even I had given you up for dead, and often have I tried to cry myself to sleep because of it. No, my dear. I’m just being clever, that’s all. Remember how we used to prophesy that you would fall in love so violently that you would hurt yourself? And how you used to wager your immortal soul that you wouldn’t—that you couldn’t fall in love, because love was a myth, or some such?”

“That was youthful foolishness———”