“What’s the matter?” demanded Dr. MacClure.
Eva stared at her hands. “I wonder if I ought to tell him — you know, that you and I...”
Dr. MacClure looked heavily at her; he seemed more than usually tired these days, and he had aged considerably. Then he said: “Yes, Eva?”
Eva was troubled. “That you’re not really my father. It doesn’t seem right not to tell him, but—”
Dr. MacClure sat still. Karen, beside him, murmured: “Don’t be a fool, Eva. What good can it do?” Somehow, in her flowered frock, with her hair combed tightly back, Karen seemed older, her advice sounder.
“I don’t know, Karen. It just doesn’t—”
“Eva,” said Dr. MacClure in the gentle voice no one but his two women had ever heard. He took her hands in his own, engulfing them. “You know, darling, that I couldn’t love you more if you were my own daughter.”
“Oh, daddy, I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it,” said Karen a little sharply. “Don’t tell him, Eva.”
Eva sighed. The event had taken place in her childhood, to her a blank prehistoric time. Years later Dr. MacClure had sensibly told her about her adoption, and the vague trouble it had caused her had never entirely disappeared.
“I won’t if you say so,” she said doubtfully, for it seemed to her that silence was wrong; and yet she was glad to be advised to keep silent — afraid of anything, no matter how slight, which might threaten her new-found happiness.
Dr. MacClure lay back on the bench, closing his eyes. “It’s better that way,” he said.
“Have you fixed the date?” asked Karen quickly, glancing at the doctor.
“Not definitely,” said Eva, shaking off her dismal mood. “I suppose I’ve been acting like an idiot — all one grin — but I do wish we were married. I get the queerest feeling sometimes — as if...”
“You’re the strangest child,” murmured Karen. “Almost as if it were never going to happen?”
“Yes,” said Eva with a little shiver. “I... I don’t think I could stand that, after all the... Marrying Dick is the only thing in the world I want.”
“Where is he?” asked Dr. MacClure dryly.
“Oh, at some hospital. There’s a bad case of—”
“Tonsils?” said the doctor.
“Daddy!”
“Aw, now, honey,” he said instantly, opening his eyes, “don’t mind me. But I want to prepare you for the life of a doctor’s wife. I want—”
“I don’t care,” said Eva defiantly. “It’s Dick I’m interested in, not his work. I’ll attend to that when I get around to it.”
“I’ll bet you will,” chuckled Dr. MacClure, but his chuckle died very quickly and he closed his eyes again.
“Sometimes I think,” said Eva desperately, “that we’ll never be married. That’s what I meant by a feeling. It’s... it’s really appalling.”
“For heaven’s sake, Eva,” cried Karen, “don’t act like a silly girl! If you want so much to marry him, marry him and have it over with!”
Eva was silent. Then she said: “I’m sorry, Karen, if my thoughts seem silly to you.” She rose.
“Sit down darling,” said Dr. MacClure quietly. “Karen didn’t mean anything by what she said.”
“I’m sorry,” murmured Karen. “I... It’s nerves, Eva.”
Eva sat down. “I... I guess I’m not myself either these last few days. Richard seems to think we ought to wait a while. He’s right, too! There’s no sense in rushing things. A man can’t change his whole life overnight, can he?”
“No,” said Dr. MacClure. “You’re a wise girl to have found that out so soon.”
“Dick’s so... I don’t know, comfortable. He makes me feel good all over.” Eva laughed happily. “We’ll go to all the funny little places in Paris and do all the crazy things people do on honeymoons.”
“You’re sure of yourself, aren’t you Eva?” asked Karen, resting her dark head on Dr. MacClure’s shoulder.
Eva wriggled ecstatically. “Sure? If what I feel isn’t sureness... It’s the most blessed thing! I dream about him now. He’s so big and strong, so much of a baby...”
Karen smiled in the darkness, twisting her small head to look up at Dr. MacClure. The doctor sat up and, with a sigh, buried his face in his hands. Karen’s smile faded, her eyes becoming more than usually veiled; there was anxiety in them, and something else on her pretty and ageless face that Eva had seen rather frequently of late.
“Here I am,” said Eva briskly, “talking about myself while you two... Do you know you both look simply awful? Don’t you feel well, either, Karen?”
“Oh, I feel quite as usual. But I think John’s badly in need of a vacation. Maybe you can talk him into one.”
“You do look dreadfully peaked, daddy,” scolded Eva. “Why don’t you close up that dungeon of yours and go abroad? Goodness knows I’m not a doctor, but an ocean voyage would do you a world of good.”
“I suppose it would,” said the doctor suddenly. He got up and began to patrol the grass.
“And you ought to go with him, Karen,” said Eva decisively.
Karen shook her head, smiling faintly. “I could never leave this place, dear. I’m made with deep roots. But John ought to go.”
“Will you, daddy?”
Dr. MacClure stopped short. “Look here, honey, you go ahead with your young man and be happy and stop worrying about me. You are happy, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Eva.
Dr. MacClure kissed her while Karen looked on, still faintly smiling, as if all the time she were thinking of something else.
At the end of June Dr. MacClure yielded to the determined campaign against him and dropped his work for a vacation in Europe. He had lost weight and his suit had begun to hang on him in a despairing sort of way.
“Be sensible, Doctor,” said Eva’s fiancé rather brusquely. “You can’t go on this way. You’ll keel over one of these days. You’re not made of iron, you know.”
“I’m finding that out,” said Dr. MacClure with a wry smile. “All right, Dick, you win. I’ll go.”
Richard and Eva saw him off; Karen, whose lassitude kept her chained to her house, did not come, and Dr. MacClure said his good-byes to her privately in the garden in Washington Square.
“Take good care of Eva,” said the big man to Richard, while the gong was clamoring on shipboard.
“Don’t worry about us. You take care of yourself, sir.”
“Daddy! You will?”
“All right, all right,” said Dr. MacClure grumpily. “Lord, you’d think I was eighty! Good-bye, Eva.”
Eva threw her arms about him and he hugged her with some of his old simian strength. Then he shook hands with Richard and they hurried off the boat.
He stood waving at them from the rail until the liner straightened out in the river. Eva suddenly felt funny. It was the first time they had ever been separated by more than a few miles; and somehow it seemed significant. She cried a little on Richard’s shoulder in the taxi.
August came and went. Eva heard from Dr. MacClure sporadically, although she wrote him every day. But the doctor was not a writing man, and the few letters he sent were like himself — precise in detail and strictly impersonal. He wrote from Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Paris.
“He’s visiting all the cancer men in the world,” said Eva indignantly to Richard. “Someone should have gone with him!”
“He’s probably having the time of his life,” grinned Dr. Scott. “It’s the change that’s important. Nothing wrong with him physically — I went over him with a fine comb. Let him alone.”