It was dimly lighted now, and Leila in her white dinner gown and Barry tall and slender in his evening black were reflected by the long mirrors mistily.

Barry took her in his arms, and kissed her. "My wife, my wife," he said, again and again, "my wife."

At first she yielded gladly, meeting his rapture with her own. But presently she became aware of a wildness in his manner, a broken note in his whispers.

So she released herself, and stood back a little from him, and asked, breathing quickly, "Barry, what has happened?"

"Everything. Since I left you this morning I've lost my place. I found the envelope on my desk this morning—telling of my discharge. They said that I'd been too often away without sufficient excuse, and so they have dropped me from the rolls. And you see that what Gordon said was true. I can't earn a living for a wife. Now that I have you, I can't take care of you—it is not much of a fellow that you've married, Leila."

Oh, the little white face with the shining eyes!

Then out of the stillness came her cry, like a bird's note, triumphant. "But I'm your wife now, and nothing can part us, Barry."

He caught up her hands in his. "Dearest, dearest—don't you see that I can't ever tell them of our marriage until I can show them——"

"Show them what, Barry?"

"That I can take care of you."

"Do you mean that I mustn't even tell Dad, Barry?"

"You mustn't tell any one, not until I come back."

Every drop of blood was drained from her face.

"Until you come back. Are you going—away?"

"I promised Gordon to-day that I would."

She swayed a little, and he caught her. "I had to promise, Leila. Don't you see? I haven't a penny, and I can't confess to them that I've married you. I wanted to tell him that you were mine—that all your sweetness and dearness belonged to me. I wanted to shout it to the world. But I haven't a penny, and I'm proud, and I won't let Gordon think I've been a—fool."

"But Dad would help us."

"Do you think I'd beg him to give me what he hasn't offered, Leila? I've got to show them that I'm not a boy."

She struggled to bring herself out of the strange numbness which gripped her. "If I could only tell Dad."

"Surely it can be our own sweet secret, dearest."

She laid her cheek against his arm, in a dumb gesture of surrender, and her little bare left hand crept up and rested like a white rose petal against the blackness of his coat.

He laid his own upon it. "Poor little hand without a wedding ring," he said.

And now the numbness seemed to engulf her, to break——

"Hush, Leila, dear one."

But she could not hush. That very morning they had slipped the wedding ring over a length of narrow blue ribbon, and Barry had tied it about her neck. To-morrow, he had promised, she should wear it for all the world to see.

But she was not to wear it. It must be hidden, as she had hidden it all day above her heart.

"Leila, you are making it hard for me."

It was the man's cry of selfishness, but hearing it, she put her own trouble aside. He needed her, and her king could do no wrong.

So she set herself to comfort him. In the month that was left to them they would make the most of their happiness. Then perhaps she could get Dad to bring her over in the summer, and he should show her London, and all the lovely places, and there would be the letters; she would write everything—and he must write.

"You little saint," he said when he left her, "you're too good for me, but all that's best in me belongs to you—my precious."

She went to the door with him and said "good-night" bravely.

Then she shut the door and shivered. When at last she made her way through the hall to the library, she seemed to be pushing against some barrier, so that her way was slow.

On the threshold of that room she stopped.

"Dad," she said, sharply.

"My darling."

He sprang to his feet just in time and caught her.

She lay against his heart white and still. The strain of the last two days had been too great for her, and Little-Lovely Leila had fainted dead away.



CHAPTER XVI

In Which a Long Name is Bestowed Upon a Beautiful Baby; and in Which a Letter in a Long Envelope Brings Freedom to Mary.

The christening of Constance's baby brought together a group of feminine personalities, which, to one possessed with imagination, might have stood for the evil and beneficent fairies of the old story books.

The little Mary-Constance Ballard Richardson, in spite of the dignity of her hyphenated name, was a wee morsel. Swathed in fine linen, she showed to the unprejudiced eye no signs of great beauty. With a wrinkly-red skin, a funny round nose, a toothless mouth—she was like every other normal baby of her age, but to her family and friends she was a rare and unmatched object.

Even Aunt Frances succumbed to her charms. "I must say," she remarked to Delilah Jeliffe, as they bent over the bassinet, "that she is remarkable for her age."

Delilah shrugged. "I'm not fond of them. They're so red and squirmy."

Leila protested hotly. "Delilah, she's lovely—such little perfect hands."

"Bird's claws!"

Mary took up the chant. "Her skin's like a rose leaf."

And Grace: "Her hair is going to be gold, like her mother's."

"Hair?" Delilah's tone was incredulous. "She hasn't any."

Aunt Frances expertly turned the small morsel on its back. "What do you call that?" she demanded, indignantly.

Above the fat crease of the baby's neck stuck out a little feathery duck's-tail curl—bright as a sunbeam.

"What do you call that?" came the chorus of worshipers.

Delilah gave way to quiet, mocking laughter. "That isn't hair," she said; "it is just a sample of yellow silk."

Porter, coming up, was treated to a repetition of this remark.

"Let us thank the Gods that it isn't red," was his fervent response.

Grace's hands went up to her own lovely hair.

"Oh," she reproached him.

Porter apologized. "I was thinking of my carroty head. Yours is glorious."

"Artists paint it," Grace agreed pensively, "and it goes well with the right kind of clothes."

Delilah looked from one to the other.

"You two would make a beautiful pair of saints on a stained glass window," she said reflectively, "with a spike of lilies and halos back of your heads."

"Most women are ready for halos," Porter said, "and wings, but I can't see myself balancing a spike of lilies."

"Nor I," Grace rippled; "you'd better make it hollyhocks, Delilah—do you know the old rhyme

"'A beau never goes Where the hollyhock blows'?"

"You've never lacked men in your life," Delilah told her, shrewdly, "but with that hair you won't be one of the comfortable married kind—it will be either a grande passion or a career for you. If you don't find your Romeo, you'll be Mother Superior in a convent, the head of a deaconess home, or a nurse on a battle-field."

Grace's eyes sparkled. "Oh, wise Delilah, you haven't drifted so very far away from my dreams. Where did you get your wisdom?"

"I'm learning things from Colin Quale. We study types together. It's great fun for me, but he's perfectly serious."

Colin Quale was Delilah's artist. "Why didn't you bring him?" Constance asked.

"Because he doesn't belong in this family group; and anyhow I had something for him to do. He's making a sketch of the gown I am to wear at the White House garden party. It will keep him busy for the afternoon."

"Delilah," Leila looked up from her worship of Mary-Constance, "I don't believe you ever see in people anything but the way they look."

"I don't, duckie. To me—you are a sort of family art gallery. I hang you up in my mind, and you make a rather nice little collection."

Barry, coming in, caught up her words, with something of his old vivacity.

"The baby belongs to the Dutch school—with that nose."

There was a chorus of protest.

"She looks like you," Delilah told him. "Except for her nose, she's a Ballard. There's nothing of her father in her, except her beautiful disposition."

She flashed a challenging glance at Gordon. He stiffened. Such women as Delilah Jeliffe might have their place in the eternal scheme of femininity, but he doubted it.

"She is a Ballard even in that," he said, formally; "it is Constance whose disposition is beyond criticism, not mine."

"And now that you've carried off Constance, you're going to take Barry," Delilah reproached him.

Leila dropped the baby's hand.

"Yes," Gordon discussed the subject with evident reluctance, "he's going over with me, to learn the business—he may never have a better opportunity."

The light went out of Barry's eyes. He left the little group, wandered to the window, and stood looking out.

"Mary will go next," Delilah prophesied. "With Constance and Barry on the other side, she won't be able to keep away."

Mary shook her head. "What would Aunt Isabelle and Susan Jenks and Pittiwitz do without me?"

"What would I do without you?" Porter demanded, boldly. "Don't put such ideas in her head, Delilah; she's remote enough as it is."

But Mary was not listening. Barry had slipped from the room, and presently she followed him. Leila had seen him go, and had looked after him longingly, but of late she had seemed timid in her public demonstrations; it was as if she felt when she was under the eye of others that by some sign or look she might betray her secret.

Mary found Barry down-stairs in the little office, his head in his hands.

"Dear boy," she said, and touched his bright hair with hesitating fingers.

He reached up and caught her hand.

"Mary," he said, brokenly, "what's the use? I began wrong—and I guess I'll go on wrong to the end."

And now she spoke with earnestness, both hands on his shoulders.

"Oh, Barry, boy—if you fight, fight with all your weapons. And don't let the wrong thoughts go on molding you into the wrong thing. If you think you are going to fail, you'll fail. But if you think of yourself as conquering, triumphant—if you think of yourself as coming back to Leila, victorious, why you'll come that way; you'll come strong and radiant, a man among men, Barry."

It was this convincing optimism of Mary Ballard's which brought to weaker natures a sense of actual achievement. To hear Mary say, "You can do it," was to believe in one's own powers. For the first time in his life Barry felt it. Hitherto, Mary had seemed rather worrying when it came to rules of conduct—rather unreasonable in her demands upon him. But now he was caught up on the wings of her belief in him.

"Do you think I can?" a light had leaped into his tired eyes.

"I know you can, dear boy," she bent and kissed him.

"You'll take care of Leila," he begged, and then, very low, "I'm afraid I've made an awful mess of things, Mary."

"You mustn't think of that—just think, Barry—of the day when you come back! How all the wedding bells will ring!"

But he thought of a wedding where there had been no bells. He thought of Little-Lovely Leila, in her yellow gown on the night of the mad March moon.

"You'll take care of her," he said again, and Mary promised.

And now the Bishop arrived, and certain old friends of the family. As Barry and Mary made their way up-stairs, they met Susan with the mail. There was one long letter for Mary, which she tore open with eagerness, glanced at it, and tucked it into her girdle, then went on with winged feet.

Porter, glancing at her as she came in, was struck by the radiance of her aspect. How lovely she was with that flush on her cheek, and with her sweet shining eyes!

With due formality and with the proper number of godfathers and godmothers, little Mary-Constance Ballard Richardson was officially named.

During the ceremony, Leila sat by her father's side, her hand in his. In these days the child clung to the strong old soldier. When she had come back to consciousness on the night that she had fainted on the threshold of the library, he had asked, "My darling, what is it?"

And she had cried, "Oh, Dad, Dad," and had wept in his arms. But she had not told him that she was Barry's wife. It was because of Barry's going, she had admitted; it seemed as if her heart would break.

The General talked the situation over with Mary. "How will she stand it, when he is really gone?"

"It will be better when the parting is over, and she settles down to other things."

Yet that day, after the christening, Mary wondered if what she had said was true. What would life hold for Leila when Barry was gone?

Her own life without Roger Poole was blank. Reluctantly, she was forced to admit it. Constance, the baby, Porter, these were the shadows, Roger was the substance.

The letters which had passed between them had shown her depths in him which had hitherto been unrevealed. Comparing him with Porter Bigelow, she realized that Porter could never say the things which Roger said; he could not think them.

And while in the eyes of the world Roger was a defeated man, and Porter a successful one, yet there was this to think of, that Porter's qualities were negative rather than positive. With all of his opportunities, he was narrowing his life to the pursuit of pleasure and his love for her. Roger had shirked responsibility toward his fellow man by withdrawal; Porter was shirking by indifference.

So she found herself, as many another woman has found herself, fighting the battle of the less fortunate. Roger wanted her, yet pressed no claim. Porter wanted her and meant to have her.

He had shown of late his impatience at the restraint which she had put upon him. He had encroached more and more upon her time—demanded more and more. He had been kept from saying the things which she did not want him to say only by the fact that she would not listen.

She knew that he was expecting things which could never be—and that by her silence she was giving sanction to his expectations. Yet she found herself dreading to say the final word which would send him from her.

The friendship between a man and a woman has this poignant quality—it has no assurance of permanence. For, if either marries, the other must suffer loss; if either loves, the other must put away that which may have become a prized association. As her friend, Mary valued Porter highly. She had known him all her life. Yet she was aware that she was taking all and returning nothing; and surely Porter had the right to ask of life something more than that.

She sighed, and going to her desk, took out of it the letter which she had received in the morning mail.

She knew that the moment that she announced the contents of that letter would be a dramatic one. Even if she did it quietly, it would have the effect of a bomb thrown into the midst of a peaceful circle. She had a fancy that it would be best to tell Porter first. He was to come back to dinner, so she dressed and went down early.

He found her in the garden. There were double rows of hyacinths in the paths now, with tulips coming up between, and beyond the fountain was an amethyst sky where the young moon showed.

She rose to greet him, her hands full of fragrant blossoms.

He held her hand tightly. "How happy you look, Mary."

"I am happy."

"Because I'm here? If you could only say that once truthfully."

"It is always good to have you,"

"But you won't tell a lie, and say you're happier, because of my coming? Oh, Contrary Mary!"

She shook her head. "If I said nice things to you, you'd misunderstand."

"Perhaps. But why this radiance?"

"Good news."

"From whom?"

"A man."

"What man?" with rising jealousy.

"One who has given me the thing I want."

He was plainly puzzled.

"I don't know what you mean."

"A letter came this morning—a lovely letter in a long envelope."

She took a paper out of a magazine which lay on the stone bench by her side. "Read that," she said.

He read and his face went perfectly white, so that it showed chalkily beneath his red hair.

"Mary," he said, "what have you done this for? You know I'm not going to let you."

"You haven't anything to do with it."

"But I have. It is ridiculous. You don't know what you are doing. You've never been tied to an office desk—you've never fought and struggled with the world."



"Neither have you, Porter."

"Well, if I haven't, is it my fault?" he demanded, "I was born into the world with this millstone of money around my neck, and a red head. Dad sent me to school and to college, and he set me up in business. There wasn't anything left for me to do but to keep straight, and I've done that for you."

"I know," she was very sweet as she leaned toward him, "but, Porter, sometimes, lately, I've wondered if that's all that is expected of us."

"All? What do you mean?"

"Aren't we expected to do something for others?"

"What others?"

She wanted to tell him about Roger Poole and the boy in the pines. Her eyes glowed. But her lips were silent.

"What others, Mary?"

"The people who aren't as fortunate as we are."

"What people?"

Mary was somewhat vague. "The people who need us—to help."

"Marry me, and you can be Lady Bountiful—dispensing charity."

"It isn't exactly charity." She had again the vision of Roger Poole and the boy. "People don't just want our money—they want us to—understand."

He was not following her. "To think that you should want to go out in the world—to work. Tell me why you are doing it."

"Because I need an outlet for my energies—the girl of limited income in these days is as ineffective as a jellyfish, if she hasn't some occupation."

"You could never be a jellyfish. Mary, listen, listen. I need you, dear. I've kept still for a year—Mary!"

"Porter, I can't."

And now he asked a question which had smouldered long in his breast.

"Is there any one else?"

Was there? Her thoughts leaped at once to Roger. What did he mean to her? What could he ever mean? He had said himself that he could expect nothing. Perhaps he had meant that she must expect nothing.

"Mary, is it—Roger Poole?"

Her eyes came up to meet his; they were like stars. "Porter, I don't—know."

He took the blow in silence. The shadows were on them now. In all the beauty of the May twilight, the little bronze boy grinned at love and at life.

"Has he asked you, Mary?"

"No. I'm not sure that he wants to marry me—I'm not sure that I want to marry him—I only know that he is different." It was like Mary to put it thus, frankly.

"No man could know you without wanting to marry you. But what has he to offer you—oh, it is preposterous."

She faced him, flaming. "It isn't preposterous, Porter. What has any man to offer any woman except his love? Oh, I know you men—you think because you have money—but if—if—both of you loved me—you'd stand before me on your merits as men—there would be nothing else in it for me but that."

"I know. And I'm willing to stand on my merits." The temper which belonged to Porter's red head was asserting itself. "I'm willing to stand on my merits. I offer you a past which is clean—a future of devotion. It's worth something, Mary—in the years to come when you know more of men, you'll understand that it is worth something."

"I know," she said, her hand on his, "it is worth a great deal. But I don't want to marry anybody." It was the old cry reiterated. "I want to live the life I have planned for a little while—then if Love claims me, it must be love—not just a comfortable getting a home for myself along the lines of least resistance. I want to work and earn, and know that I can do it. If I were to marry you, it would be just because I couldn't see any other way out of my difficulties, and you wouldn't want me that way, Porter."

He did want her. But he recognized the futility of wanting her. For a little while, at least, he must let her have her way. Indeed, she would have it, whether he let her or not. But Roger Poole should not have her. He should not. All that was primitive in Porter rose to combat the claims which she made for his rival.

"I knew there'd be trouble when you let the Tower Rooms," he said heavily at last; "a man like that always appeals to a girl's sense of romance."

The Tower Rooms! Mary saw Roger as he had stood in them for the first time amid all the confusion of Constance's flight from the home nest. That night he had seemed to her merely a person who would pay the rent—yet the money which she had received from him had been the smallest part.

She drifted away on the tide of her dreams, and Porter felt sharply the sense of her utter detachment from him.

"Mary," he said, tensely, "Mary, oh, my little Contrary Mary—you aren't going to slip out of my life. Say that you won't."

"I'm not slipping away from you," she said, "any more than I am slipping away from my old self. I don't understand it, Porter. I only know that what you call contrariness is a force within me which I can't control. I wish that I could do the things which you want me to do, I wish I could be what Gordon and Constance and Barry and even Aunt Frances want—but there's something which carries me on and on, and seems to say, 'There's more than this in the world for you'—and with that call in my ears, I have to follow."

He rose, and his head was up. "All my life, I have wanted just one thing which has been denied me—and that one thing is you. And no other man shall take you from me. I suppose I've got to set myself another season of patience. But I can wait, because in the end I shall get what I want—remember that, Mary."

"Don't be too sure, Porter."

"I am so sure," lifting the hand which was weighted with the heavy ring, "I am so sure, that I will make a wager with fortune, that the day will come when this ring shall be our betrothal ring, I'll give you others, Mary, but this shall be the one which shall bind you to me."

She snatched her hand away. "You speak as if you were—sure," she said.

"I am. I'm going to let you work and do as you please for a little while, if you must. But in the end I'm going to marry you, Mary."

At dinner Mary announced the contents of her letter in the long envelope. "I have received my appointment as stenographer in the Treasury, and I'm to report for duty on the twentieth."

It was Aunt Frances who recovered first from the shock. "Well, if you were my child——"

Grace, with little points of light in her eyes, spoke smoothly, "If Mary were your child, she would be as dutiful as I am, mother. But you see she isn't your child."

Aunt Frances snorted—"Dutiful."

Gordon was glowering. "It is rank foolishness."

Mary flared. "That's your point of view, Gordon. You judge me by Constance. But Constance has always been feminine and sweet—and I've never been particularly feminine, nor particularly sweet."

Barry followed up her defense. "I guess Mary knows how to take care of herself, Gordon."

"No woman knows how to take care of herself," Gordon was obstinate, "when it comes to the fight with economic conditions. I should hate to think of Constance trying to earn a living."

"Gordon, dear," Constance's voice appealed, "I couldn't—but Mary can—only I hate to see her do it."

"I don't," said Grace, stoutly. "I envy her."

Aunt Frances fixed her daughter with a stern eye. "Don't encourage her in her foolishness, Grace," she said; "each of you should marry and settle down with some nice man."

"But what man, mother?" Grace, leaning forward, put the question, with an irritating air of doubt.

"There are a half dozen of them waiting."

"Nice boys! But a man. Find me one, mother, and I'll marry him."

"The trouble with you and Mary," Porter informed her, "is that you don't want a man. You want a hero."

Grace nodded. "With a helmet and plume, and riding on a steed—that's my dream—but mother refuses to let me wander in Arcady where such knights are found."

"I think," Constance remarked happily, "that now and then they are found in every-day life, only you and Mary won't recognize them."

From the other side her husband smiled at her. "She thinks I'm one," he said, and his fine young face was suffused by faint color. "She thinks I'm one. I hope none of you will ever undeceive her."

Under the table Leila's little hand was slipped into Barry's big one. She could not proclaim to the world that she had found her knight, and loved him.

Aunt Frances, very stiff and straight in her jetted dinner gown, resumed, "I wish it were possible to give girls a dose of common sense, as you give them cough syrup."

"Mother!"

But Aunt Frances, mounted on her grievance, rode it through the salad course. She had wanted Grace to marry—her beauty and her family had entitled her to an excellent match. But Grace was single still, holding her own against all her mother's arguments, maintaining in this one thing her right to independent action.

Isabelle, straining her ears to hear what it was all about, asked Mary, late that night, "What upset Frances at dinner?"

Mary told her.

"Do you think I'm wrong, Aunt Isabelle?" she asked.

The gentle lady sighed, "If you feel that it is right, it must be right for you. But you're trying to be all head, dear child. And there's your heart to reckon with."

Mary flushed "I know. But I don't want my heart to speak—yet."

Aunt Isabelle patted her hand. "I think it has—spoken," she said softly.

Mary clung to her. "How did you know?"

"We who have dull ears have often clear eyes—it is one of our compensations, Mary."



CHAPTER XVII

In Which an Artist Finds What All His Life He Has Been Looking For; and in Which He Speaks of a Little Saint in Red.

It might have been by chance that Delilah Jeliffe driving in her electric through a broad avenue on the afternoon following the christening of Constance's baby, met Porter Bigelow, and invited him to go home with her for a cup of tea.

There were certain things which Delilah wanted of Porter. Perhaps she wanted more than she would ever get. But to-day she had it in her mind to find out if he would go with her to the White House garden party.

Colin Quale was little and blond. Because of his genius, his presence had added distinction to her entrances and exits. But at the coming function, she knew that she needed more than the prestige of genius—among the group of distinguished guests who would attend, the initial impression would mean much. Porter's almost stiff stateliness would match the gown she was to wear. His position, socially, was impregnable; he had wealth, and youth, and charm. He would, in other words, make a perfectly correct background for the picture which she designed to make of herself.

The old house at Georgetown, to which they came finally, was set back among certain blossoming shrubs and bushes. A row of tulips flamed on each side of the walk. Small and formal cedars pointed their spired heads toward the spring sky.

In the door, as they ascended the steps, appeared Colin Quale.

"Come in," he said, "come in at once. I want you to see what I have done for you."

He spoke directly to Delilah. It was doubtful if he saw Porter. He was blind to everything except the fact that his genius had designed for Delilah Jeliffe a costume which would make her fame and his.

They followed him through the wide hall to the back porch in which he had set up his easel. There, where a flowering almond bush flung its branches against a background of green, he had worked out his idea.

A water-color sketch on the easel showed a girl in white—a girl who might have been a queen or an empress. Her gown partook of the prevailing mode, but not slavishly. There was distinction in it, and color here and there, which Colin explained.

"It must be of sheer white, with many flowing flounces, and with faint pink underneath like the almond bloom. And there must be a bit of heavenly blue in the hat, and a knot of green at the girdle—and a veil flung back—you see?—there'll be sky and field and flowers and a white cloud—all the delicate color and bloom——"

Still explaining, he was at last induced to leave the picture, and have tea. While Delilah poured, Porter watched the two, interested and diverted by enthusiasms which seemed to him somewhat puerile for a man who could do real things in the world of art.

Yet he saw that Delilah took the little man very seriously, that she hung on his words of advice, and that she was obedient to his demands upon her.

"She'll marry him some day," he said to himself, and Delilah seemed to divine his thought, for when at last Colin had rushed back to his sketch, she settled herself in her low chair, and told Porter of their first meeting.

"I'll begin at the beginning," she said; "it is almost too funny to be true, and it could not possibly have happened to any one but me and Colin.

"It was last summer when I was on the North Shore. Father and I stayed at a big hotel, but I was crazy to get acquainted with the cottage colony.

"But somehow I didn't seem to make good—you see that was in my crude days when I wanted to be a cubist picture instead of a daguerreotype. I liked to be startling, and thought that to attract attention was to attract friends—but I found that I did not attract them.

"One night in August there was a big dance on at one of the hotels, and I wanted a gown which should outshine all the others—the ball was to be given for the benefit of a local chanty, and all the cottage colony would attend. I sent an order for a gown to my dressmaker, and she shipped out a strange and wonderful creation. It was an imported affair—you know the kind—with a bodice of a string of jet and a wisp of lace—with a tulle tunic, and a skirt of gold brocade that was so tight about my feet that it had the effect of Turkish trousers. For my head she sent a strip of gold gauze which was to be swathed around and around my hair in a sort of nun's coif, so that only a little knot could show at the back and practically none in front. It was the last cry in fashions. It made me look like a dream from the Arabian Nights, and I liked it."

She laughed, and, in spite of himself, Porter laughed with her.

"I wore it to the dance, and it was there that I met Colin Quale. I wish I could make you see the scene—the great ballroom, and all the other women staring at me as I came in—and the men, smiling.

"I was in my element. I thought, in those days, that the test of charm was to hold the eyes of the multitude. To-day I know that it is to hold the eyes of the elect, and it is Colin who has taught me.

"I had danced with a dozen other men when he came up to claim me. I scarcely remembered that I had promised him a dance. When he was presented to me I had only been aware of a pale little man with eye-glasses and nervous hands who had stared at me rather too steadily.

"We danced in silence for several minutes and he danced divinely.

"He stopped suddenly. 'Let's get out of here,' he said. 'I want to talk to you.'

"I looked at him in amazement. 'But I want to dance.'

"'You can always dance,' he said, quietly, 'but you cannot always talk to me.'

"There was nothing in his manner to indicate the preliminaries of a flirtation. He was perfectly serious and he evidently thought that he was offering me a privilege. Curiosity made me follow him, and he led the way down the hall to a secluded reception room where there was a long mirror, a little table, and a big bunch of old-fashioned roses in a bowl.

"On our way we passed a row of chairs, where some one had left a wrap and a scarf. Colin snatched up the scarf—it was a long wide one of white chiffon. The next morning I returned it to him, and he found the owner. I am not sure what explanation he made for his theft, but it was undoubtedly attributed to the eccentricities of genius!

"Well, when, as I said, we reached the little room, he pulled a chair forward for me, so that I sat directly in front of the mirror.

"I remember that I surveyed myself complacently. To my deluded eyes, my appearance could not be improved. My head, swathed in its golden coif, seemed to give the final perfect touch."

She laughed again at the memory, and Porter found himself immensely amused. She had such a cool way of turning her mental processes inside out and holding them up for others to see.

"As I sat there, stealing glances at myself, I became conscious that my little blond man was studying me. Other men had looked at me, but never with such a cold, calculating gaze—and when he spoke to me, I nearly jumped out of my shoes—his voice was crisp, incisive.

"'Take it off,' he said, and touched the gauze that tied up my head.

"I gasped. Then I drew myself up in an attempt at haughtiness. But he wasn't impressed a bit.

"'I suppose you know that I am an artist, Miss Jeliffe,' he said, 'and from the moment you came into the room, I haven't had a bit of peace. You're spoiling your type—and it affects me as a chromo would, or a crude crayon portrait, or any other dreadful thing.'

"Do you know how it feels to be called a 'dreadful thing' by a man like that? Well, it simply made me shrivel up and have shivers down my spine.

"'But why?' I stammered.

"'Women like you,' he said, 'belong to the stately, the aristocratic type. You can be a grande dame or a duchess—and you are making of yourself—what? A soubrette, with your tango skirt and your strapped slippers, and your hideous head-dress—take it off.'

"'But I can't take it off,' I said, almost tearfully; 'my hair underneath is—awful.'

"'It doesn't make any difference about your hair underneath—it can't be worse than it is,' he roared. 'I want to see your coloring—take it off.'

"And I took it off. My hair was perfectly flat, and as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I wanted to laugh, to shriek. But Colin Quale was as solemn as an owl. 'Ah,' he said, 'I knew you had a lot of it!'

"He caught up the scarf which he had borrowed and flung it over my shoulders. He gave a flick of his fingers against my forehead and pulled down a few hairs and parted them. He whisked a little table in front of me, and thrust the bunch of roses into my arms.

"'Now look at yourself,' he commanded.

"I looked and looked again. I had never dreamed that I could be like that. The scarf and the table hid every bit of that Paris gown, and showed just a bit of white throat. My plain parted hair and the roses—I looked," and now Delilah was blushing faintly, "I looked as I had always wanted to look—like the lovely ladies in the old English portraits.

"'Do you like it?' Colin asked.

"He knew that I liked it from my eyes, and for the first time since I had met him, he laughed.

"'All my life,' he said, 'I have been looking for just such a woman as you. A woman to make over—to develop. We must be friends, Miss Jeliffe. You must let me know where I can see you again.'

"Well, I didn't dance any more that night. I wrapped the scarf about my head, and went back to my hotel. Colin Quale went with me. All the way he talked about the sacredness of beauty. He opened my eyes. I began to see that loveliness should be suggested rather than emphasized. And I have told you this because I want you to understand about Colin. He isn't in love with me. I rather fancy that back home in Amesbury or Newburyport, or whatever town it is that he hails from, there's somebody whom he'll find to marry. To him I am a statue to be molded. I am clay, marble, a tube of paint, a canvas ready for his brush. It was the same way with this old house. He wanted a setting for me, and he couldn't rest until he had found it. He has not only changed my atmosphere, he has changed my manner—I was going to say my morals—he brings to me portraits of Romney ladies and Gainsborough ladies—until I seem positively to swim in a sea of stateliness. And what I said just now about manners and morals is true. A woman lives up to the clothes she wears. If you think this change is on the surface, it isn't. I couldn't talk slang in a Gainsborough hat, and be in keeping, so I don't talk slang; and a perfect lady in a moleskin mantle must have morals to match; so in my little mantle I cannot tell a lie."

To see her with lowered lashes, telling it, was the funniest thing in the world, and Porter shouted. Then her lashes were, for a moment, raised, and the old Delilah peeped out, shrewd, impish.

"He wants me to change my name. No, don't misunderstand me—not my last one. But the first. He says that Delilah smacks of the adventuress. I don't think he is quite sure of the Bible story, but he gets his impressions from grand opera—and he knows that the Delilah of the Samson story wasn't nice—not in a lady-like sense. My middle name is Anne. He likes that better."

"Lady Anne? You'll look the part in that garden party frock he is designing for you."

And now she had reached the question toward which she had been working. "Shall you go?"

He shook his head. "I doubt it. It isn't a function from which one will be missed. And the Ballards won't be there. Mary is going over to New York with Constance for a few days before the sailing. I'm to join them on the final day."

"And you won't go to the garden party without Mary?"

He found himself moved, suddenly, to speak out to her.

"She wouldn't go if she were here—not with me."

"Contrary Mary?" she drawled the words, giving them piquant suggestion.

"It isn't contrariness. Her independence is characteristic. She won't let me do things because she wants to do them by herself. But some day she'll let me do them."

He said it grimly, and Delilah flashed a glance at him, then said carefully, "It would be a pity if she should fancy—Roger Poole."

"She won't."

"You can't tell—pity leads to the softer feeling, you know."

"Why should she pity him?"

"There's his past."

"His past? Roger Poole's? What do you know of it, Delilah?"

As he leaned forward to ask the eager question, he knew that by all the rules of the game he should not be discussing Mary with any one. But he told himself hotly that it was for Mary's good. If things had been hidden, they should be revealed—the sooner the better.

Delilah gave him the details dramatically.

"Then his wife is dead?"

"Yes. But before that the scandal lost him his church. Nobody seems to know much of it all, I fancy. Mary only gave me the outline."

"And she knows?"

"Yes. Roger told her."

"The chances are that there's—another side."

He knew that it was a small thing to say. He would not have said it to any one but Delilah. She would not think him small. To her all things would be fair for a lover.

Before he went, that afternoon, he had promised to go with Delilah to the White House garden party.

Hence a week later there floated within the vision of the celebrities and society folk, gathered together on the spacious lawn of the executive mansion, a lovely lady in faint rose-white, with a touch of heavenly blue in her wide hat, from which floated a veil which half hid her down-drooped eyes.

People began at once to ask, "Who is she?"

When it was discovered that her name was Jeliffe, and that she was not a distinguished personage, it did not matter greatly. There was about her an air of distinction—a certain quiet atmosphere of withdrawal from the common herd which had nothing in it of haughtiness, but which seemed to set her apart.

Porter, following in her wake as she swept across the green, thought of the girl in leopard skins, whose unconventionality had shocked him. Surely in this woman was developed a sense of herself as the center of a picture which was almost uncanny. He found himself contrasting Mary's simplicity and lack of pose.

Mary's presence here to-day would have meant much to a few people who knew and loved her; it would have meant nothing to the crowd who stared at Delilah Jeliffe.

Colin Quale was there to enjoy the full triumph of the transformation. He hovered at a little distance from Delilah, worshiping her for the genius which met and matched his own.

"I shall paint her in that," he said to Porter. "It will be my masterpiece. And if you could have seen her on the night I met her——"

"She told me." Porter was smiling.

"It was like one of the old masters daubed by a novice, or like a room whitewashed over rare carvings—everything was hidden which should have been shown, and everything was shown which should have been hidden. It was monstrous.

"There are few women," he went on, "whom I could make over as I have made her over. They have not the adaptability—the temperament. There was one whom I could have transformed. But I was not allowed. She was little and blonde and the wife of a clergyman; she looked like a saint—-and she should have worn straight things of clear green or red, or blue. But she wore black. I've sometimes wondered if she was such a saint as she looked. There was a divorce afterward, I believe, and another man. And she died."

Porter, listening idly, came back. "What type was she?"

"Fra Angelico—to perfection. I should have liked to dress her."

"Did you ever tell her that you wanted to do it?"

"Yes. And she listened. It was then that I gained my impression—that she was not a saint. One night there was a little entertainment at the parish house and I had my way. I made of her an angel, in a red robe with a golden lyre—and I painted her afterward. She used to come to my studio, but I'm not sure that Poole liked it."

"Poole?" Porter was tense.

"Her husband. He could not make her happy."

"Was she—the one in fault?"

Colin shrugged. "There are always two stories. As I have said, she looked like a saint."

"I should like to see—the picture." Porter tried to speak lightly. "May I come up some day to your rooms?"

Colin's face beamed.

"I'm getting into new quarters. I shall want your opinion—call me up before you come."

It was Colin who went home with Delilah in Porter's car. Porter pleaded important business, and walked for an hour around the Speedway, his brain in a whirl.

Then Mary knew—Mary knew—and it had made no difference in her thought of Roger Poole!



CHAPTER XVIII

In Which Mary Writes of the Workaday World, and in Which Roger Writes of the Dreams of a Boy.

In the Tower Rooms—June.

I have been working in the office for a week, and it has been the hardest week of my life. But please don't think that I have any regrets—it is only that the world has been so lovely outside, and that I have been shut in.

I am beginning to understand that the woman in the home has a freedom which she doesn't sufficiently value. She can run down-town in the morning; or slip out in the afternoon, or put off until to-morrow something which should have been done to-day. But men can't run out or slip away or put off—no matter if the sun is shining, or the birds singing, or the wind calling, or the open road leading to adventure.

Yet there are compensations, and I am trying to see them. I am trying to live up to my theories. And I am sustained by the thought that at last I am a wage-earner—independent of any one—capable of buying my own bread and butter, though all masculine help should fail!

Aunt Isabelle is a dear, and so is Susan Jenks. And that's another thing to think about. What will the wage-earning part of the world do, when there are no home-keepers left? If it were not for Aunt Isabelle and Susan, there wouldn't be any one to trail after me with cushions for my tired back, and cold things for me to drink on hot days, and hot things to drink on cool days.

I begin to perceive faintly the masculine point of view. If I were a man I should want a wife for just that—to toast my slippers before the fire as they do in the old-fashioned stories, to have my dinner piping hot, and to smooth the wrinkles out of my forehead.

That's why I'm not sure that I should make a comfortable sort of wife. I can't quite see myself toasting the slippers. But I can see Constance toasting them, or Leila—but Grace and I—you see, after all, there are home women and the other kind, and I fancy that I'm the other kind.

This, you'll understand, is a philosophy founded on the vast experience of a week in the workaday world—I'll let you know later of any further modification of my theories.

Well, the house seems empty with just the three of us, and Pittiwitz. I miss Constance beyond words, and the beautiful baby. Constance wanted to name her for me, but Gordon insisted that she should be called after Constance, so they compromised on Mary-Constance, such a long name for such a mite.

We all went to New York to see them off. By "all," I mean our crowd—Aunt Frances and Grace, Leila and the General—oh, poor little Leila—Delilah and Colin Quale, Aunt Isabelle and I, Susan Jenks with the baby in her arms until the very last minute—and Porter Bigelow.

At the boat Leila went all to pieces. I could never have believed that our gay little Leila would have taken anything so hard—and it was pitiful to see Barry. But I can't talk about that—I can't think about it.

Porter was dear to Leila. He treated her as if she were his own little sister, and it was lovely. He took her right away from the General, when the ship was leaving the dock.

"Brace up, little girl," he said; "he'll be back before you know it."

He literally carried her to a taxi and put her in, and then began such a day. We did all of the delightful things that one can do in New York on a summer day, beginning with breakfast at a charming inn on Long Island, and ending with a roof garden at night. And that night Leila was so tired that she went to sleep all in a minute, like a child, and forgot to grieve.

Since we came back to Washington, Porter has kept it up, not letting Leila miss Barry any more than possible, and playing big brother to perfection.

It is queer how we misjudge people. If any one had told me that Porter could be so sweet and tender to anybody, I wouldn't have believed it. But perhaps Leila brings out that side of him. Now I am independent, and aggressive, and I make Porter furious, and most of the time we fight.

As I said, the house seems empty—but I am not in it much now. If I had not had my work, I think I should have gone crazy. That's why men don't get silly and hysterical and morbid like women—they are saved by the day's work. I simply have to forget my troubles while I transcribe my notes on the typewriter.

Of course you know what life in the Departments is without my telling you. But to me it isn't monotonous or machine-like. I am awfully interested in the people. Of course my immediate work is with the nice old Chief. I'm glad he is old, and gray-haired. It makes me feel comfortable and chaperoned. Do you know that I believe the reason that most girls hate to go out to work is because of the loss of protection. You see we home girls are always in the care of somebody. I've been more than usually independent, but there has always been some one to play propriety in the background. When I was a tiny tot there was my nurse. Later at kindergarten I was sent home in a 'bus with all the other babies, and with a nice teacher to see that we arrived safely. Then there was mother and father and Barry and Constance, some of them wherever I went—and finally, Aunt Isabella.

But in the office, I am not Mary Ballard, Daughter of the Home. I am Mary Ballard, Independent Wage-Earner—stenographer at a thousand a year. There's nobody to stand between me and the people I meet. No one to say, "Here is my daughter, a woman of refinement and breeding; behind her I stand ready to hold you accountable for everything you may do to offend her." In the wage-earning world a woman must stand for what she is—and she must set the pace. So, in the office I find that I must have other manners than those in my home. I can't meet men as frankly and freely. I can't laugh with them and talk with them as I would over a cup of tea at my own little table. If you and I had met, for example, in the office, I should have put up a barrier of formality between us, and I should have said, "Good-morning" when I met you and "Good-night" when I left you, and it would have taken us months to know as much about each other as you and I knew after a week in the same house.

I suppose if I live here for years and years, that I shall grow to look upon my gray-haired chief as a sort of official grandfather, and my fellow-clerks will be brothers and sisters by adoption, but that will take time.

I wonder if I shall work for "years and years"? I am not sure that I should like it. And there you have the woman of it. A man knows that his toiling is for life; unless he grows rich and takes to golf. But a woman never looks ahead and says, "This thing I must do until I die." She always has a sense of possible release.

I am not at all sure that I am a logical person. In one breath I am telling you that I like my work; and in the next I am saying that I shouldn't care to do it all my life. But at least there's this for it, that just now it is a heavenly diversion from the worries which would otherwise have weighed.

What did you do about lunches? Mine are as yet an unsolved problem. I like my luncheon nicely set forth on my own mahogany, with the little scalloped linen doilies that we've always used. And I want my own tea and bread and butter and marmalade, and Susan's hot little made-overs. But here I am expected to rush out with the rest, and feast on impossible soups and stews and sandwiches in a restaurant across the way. The only alternative is to bring my lunch in a box, and eat it on my desk. And then I lose the breath of fresh air which I need more than the food.

Oh, these June days! Are they hot with you? Here they are heavenly. When the windows are open, the sweet warm air blows up from the river and across the White Lot, and we get a whiff of roses from the gardens back of the President's house; and when I reach home at night, the fragrance of the roses in our own garden meets me long before I can see the house. We have wonderful roses this year, and the hundred-leaved bush back of the bench by the fountain is like a rosy cloud. I made a crown of them the other day, and put them on the head of the little bronze boy, and I took a picture which I am sending. Somehow the boy of the fountain has always seemed to me to be alive, and to have in him some human quality, like a faun or a dryad.

Last night I sat very late in the garden, and I thought of what you said to me that night when you tried to tell me about your life. Do you remember what you said—that when I came into it, it seemed to you that the garden bloomed? Well, I came across this the other day, in a volume of Ruskin which father gave me, and which somehow I've never cared to read—but now it seems quite wonderful:

"You have heard it said that flowers flourish rightly only in the garden of some one who loves them. I know you would like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, and say to the south wind, 'Come thou south wind and breathe upon my garden that the spices of it may flow forth.' This you would think a great thing. And do you not think it a greater thing that all this you can do for fairer flowers than these—flowers that have eyes like yours and thoughts like yours, and lives like yours; which, once saved, you save forever.

"Will you not go down among them—far among the moorlands and the rocks—far in the darkness of the terrible streets; these feeble florets are lying with all their fresh leaves torn and their stems broken—will you never go down to them, not set them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence them in their shuddering from the fierce wind?"

There's a lot more of it—but perhaps you know it. I think I have always done nice little churchly things, and charitable things, but I haven't thought as much, perhaps, about my fellow man and woman as I might. We come to things slowly here in Washington. We are conservative, and we have no great industrial problems, no strikes and unions and things like that. Grace says that there is plenty here to reform, but the squalor doesn't stick right out before your eyes as it does in some of the dreadful tenements in the bigger cities. So we forget—and I have forgotten. Until your letter came about that boy in the pines.

Everything that you tell me about him is like a fairy tale. I can shut my eyes and see you two in that circle of young pines. I can hear your voice ringing in the stillness. You don't tell me of yourself, but I know this, that in that boy you've found an audience—and he is doing things for you while you are doing them for him. You are living once more, aren't you?

And the little sad children. I was so glad to pick out the books with the bright pictures. Weren't the Cinderella illustrations dear? With all the gowns as pink as they could be and the grass as green as green, and the sky as blue as blue. And the yellow frogs in "The frog he would a wooing go," and the Walter Crane illustrations for the little book of songs.

You must make them sing "Oh, What Have You Got for Dinner, Mrs. Bond?" and "Oranges and Lemons" and "Lavender's blue, Diddle-Diddle."

Do you know what Aunt Isabelle is making for the little girls? She is so interested. Such rosy little aprons of pink and white checked gingham—with wide strings to tie behind. And my contribution is pink hair ribbons. Now won't your garden bloom?

You must tell me how their little garden plots come on. Surely that was an inspiration. I told Porter about them the other night, and he said, "For Heaven's sake, who ever heard of beginning with gardens in the education of ignorant children?"

But you and I begin and end with gardens, don't we? Were the seeds all right, and did the bulbs come up? Aunt Isabelle almost cried over your description of the joy on the little faces when the crocuses they had planted appeared.

I am eager to hear more of them, and of you. Oh, yes, and of Cousin Patty. I simply love her.

There's so much more to say, but I mustn't. I must go to bed, and be fresh for my work in the morning.

Ever sincerely,

MARY BALLARD.

Among the Pines.

I shall have to begin at the last of your letter, and work toward the beginning, for it is of my sad children that I must speak first—although my pen is eager to talk about you, and what your letter has meant to me.

The sad children are no longer sad. Against the sand-hills they are like rose petals blown by the wind. Their pink aprons tied in the back with great bows, and the pink ribbons have transformed them, so that, except for their blank eyes, they might be any other little girls in the world.

I have taught them several of the pretty songs; you should hear their piping voices—and with their picture books and their gardens, they are very busy and happy indeed.

Their mother is positively illumined by the change her young folks. Never in her life has she seen any country but this one of charred pines and sand. I find her bending over the Cinderella book, liking it, and liking the children's little gardens.

"We ain't never had no flower garden," she confided to me. "Jim he ain't had time, and I ain't had time, and I ain't never had no luck nohow."

But the boy still means the most to me. And you have found the reason. It isn't what I am doing for him, it is what he is doing for me. If you could see his eyes! They are a boy's eyes now, not those of a little wild animal. He is beginning to read the simple books you sent. We began with "Mother Goose," and I gave him first "The King of France and Forty Thousand Men." The "Oranges and Lemons" song carried on the Dick Whittington atmosphere which he had liked in my poem, with its bells of Old Bailey and Shoreditch. He'll know his London before I get through with him.

But we've struck even a deeper note. One Sunday I was moved to take out with me your father's old Bible. There's a rose between its leaves, kept for a talisman against the blue devils which sometimes get me in their grip. Well, I took the old Bible out to our little amphitheater in the pines, and read, what do you think? Not the Old Testament stories.

I read the Beatitudes, and my boy listened, and when I had finished, he asked, "What is blessed? And who said that?"

I told him, and brought back to myself in the telling the vision of myself as a boy. Oh, how far I have drifted from the dreams of that boy! And if it had not been for you I should never have turned back. And now this boy in the pines, and the boy who was I are learning together, step by step. I am trying to forget the years between. I am trying to take up life where it was before I was overthrown. I can't quite get hold of things yet as a man, for when I try, I feel a man's bitterness. But the boy believes, and I have shut the man in me away, until the boy grows up.

Does this sound fantastic? To whom else would I dare write such a thing, but to you? But you will understand. I feel that I need make no apology.

Coming now to you and your work. I can bring no optimism to bear, I suppose I should say that it is well. But there is in me too much of the primitive masculine for that. When a man cares for a woman he inevitably wants to shield her. But what would you? Shall a man let the thing which he would cherish be buffeted by the winds?

I don't like to think of you in an office, with all your pretty woman instincts curbed to meet the stern formality of such a life. I don't like to think that any chief, however fatherly, shall dictate to you not only letters but rules of conduct. I don't like to think of you as hustled by a crowd at lunch time. I don't like to think of the great stone walls which shut you in. I don't want your wings clipped for such a cage.

And there is this I must say, that all men do not need wives to toast their slippers or to serve their meals piping hot, or even to smooth the wrinkles, although I confess that there's an appeal in this last. Some of us need wives for inspiration, for spiritual and mental uplift, for the word of cheer when our hearts are weary—for the strength which believes in our strength—one doesn't exactly think of Juliet as toasting slippers, or of Rosalind, or of Portia, yet such women never for one moment failed their lovers.

My Cousin Patty says that work will do you good, and we have great arguments. I have told her of you, not everything, because there are some things which are sacred. But I have told her that life for me, since I have known you, has taken on new meanings.

She glories in your independence and wants to know you. Some day, it is written, I am sure, that you two shall meet. In some things you are much alike—in others utterly different, with the differences made by heredity and environment.

My little Cousin Patty is the composite of three generations. Amid her sweets and spices, she is as domestic as her grandmother, but her mind sweeps on to the future of women in a way which makes me gasp.

Politics are the breath of her life. She comes of a long line of statesmen, and having no father or brother or husband to uphold the family traditions of Democracy, she upholds them herself. She is intensely interested just now in the party nominations. A split among the Republicans gives her hope of the election of the Democratic candidate. She's such a feminine little creature with her soft voice and appealing manner, with her big white aprons covering her up, and curling wisps of black hair falling over her little ears, that the contrasts in her life are almost funny. In our evenings over the little white boxes, we mix questions of State Rights and Free Trade with our bridal decorations, and it seems to me that I shall never again go to a wedding without a vision of my little Cousin Patty among her orange blossoms, laying down the law on current politics.

The negro question in Cousin Patty's mind is that of the Southerner of the better class. It isn't these descendants of old families who hate the negro. Such gentlefolk do not, of course, want equality, but they want fair treatment for the weaker race. Find me a white man who raves with rabid prejudice against the black, and I will show you one whose grandfather belonged not to the planter but to the cracker class, or a Northerner grafting on Southern Stock. Even in slave times there was rancor between the black man and what he called "po' white trash" and it still continues.

The picture of the little bronze boy with his crown of roses lies on my desk. I should like much to sit with you on the bench beneath the hundred-leaved bush. What things I should have to say to you! Things which I dare not write, lest you never let me write again.

You glean the best from everything. That you should take my little talk about gardens, and fit it to what Ruskin has said, is a gracious act. You speak of that night in the garden. Do you remember that you wore a scarlet wrap of thin silk? I could think of nothing as you came toward me, but of some glorious flower of almost supernatural bloom. All about you the garden was dying. But you were Life—Life as it springs up afresh from a world that is dead.

I know how empty the old house seems to you, without Barry, without Constance, without the beautiful baby whom I have never seen. To me it can never seem empty with you in it. Is the saying of such things forbidden? Please believe that I don't mean to force them on you, but I write as I think.

By this post Cousin Patty is sending a box of her famous cake, for you and Aunt Isabelle. There's enough for an army, so I shall think of you as dispensing tea in the garden, with your friends about you—lucky friends—and with the little bronze boy looking on and laughing.

To Mary of the Garden, then, this letter goes with all good wishes.

ROGER POOLE.



CHAPTER XIX

In Which Porter Plants an Evil Seed Which Grows and Flourishes; and in Which Ghosts Rise and Confront Mary.

As has been said, Porter Bigelow was not a snob, and he was a gentleman. But even a gentleman can, when swayed by primal emotions, convince himself that high motives rule, even while performing acts of doubtful honor.

It was thus that Porter proved to himself that his interest in Roger Poole's past was purely that of the protector and friend of Mary Ballard. Mary must not throw herself away. Mary must be guarded against the tragedy of marriage with a man who was not worthy. And who could do this better than he?

In pursuance of his policy of protection he took his way one afternoon in July to Colin's studio.

"I'm staying in town," Colin told him, "because of Miss Jeliffe. Her father is held by the long Session. I'm painting another picture of her, and fixing up these rooms in the interim—how do you like them?"

In his furnishing, Colin had broken away from conventional tradition. Here were no rugs hung from balconies, no rich stuffs and suits of armor. It was simply a cool little place, with a big window overlooking one of the parks. Its walls were tinted gray, and there were a few comfortable rattan chairs, with white linen cushions. A portrait of Delilah dominated the room. He had painted her in the costume which she had worn at the garden party—in all the glory of cool greens and faint pink, and heavenly blue.

Porter surveying the portrait said, slowly, "You said that you had painted—other women?"

"Yes—but none so satisfactory as Miss Jeliffe."

"There was the little saint—in red."

"You remember that? It is just a small canvas."

"You said you'd show it to me."

Colin, rummaging in a second room, called back, "I've found it, and here's another, of a woman who seemed to fit in with a Botticelli scheme. She was the long lank type."

Porter was not interested in the Botticelli woman, nor in Colin's experiments. He wanted to see Roger Poole's wife, so he gave scant attention to Colin's enthusiastic comments on the first canvas which he displayed.

"She has the long face. D'you see? And the thin long body. But I couldn't make her a success. That's the joy of Delilah Jeliffe. She has the temperament of an actress and simply lives in her part. But this woman couldn't. And lobster suppers and lovely lank ladies are not synonymous—so I gave her up."

But Porter was reaching for the other sketch.

With it in his hand, he surveyed the small creature with the angel face. In her dress of pure clear red, with the touch of gold in the halo, and a lyre in her hand, she seemed lighted by divine fire, above the earth, appealing.

"I fancy it must have been the man's fault if marriage with such a wife was a failure," he ventured.

Colin shrugged. "Who can tell?" he said. "There were moments when she did not seem a saint."

"What do you mean?" Porter's voice was almost irritable.

"It is hard to tell," the little artist reflected—"now and then a glance, a word—seemed to give her away."

"You may have misunderstood."

"Perhaps. But men who know women rarely misunderstand—that kind."

"Did you ever hear Roger Poole preach?" Porter asked, abruptly.

"Several times. He promised to be a great man. It was a pity."

"And you say she married again."

"Yes, and died shortly after."

The subject ended there, and Porter went away with the vision in his mind of Roger's wife, and of what the picture of the little saint in red would mean to Mary Ballard if she could see it.

The thought, having lodged like an evil seed, grew and flourished.

Of late he had seen comparatively little of Mary. He was not sure whether she planned deliberately to avoid him, or whether her work really absorbed her. That she wrote to Roger Poole he knew. She did not try to hide the fact, but spoke frankly of Roger's life in the pines.

The flames of his jealous thought burned high and hot. He refused to go with his father and mother to the northern coast, preferring to stay and swelter in the heat of Washington where he could be near Mary. He grew restless and pale, unlike himself. And he found in Leila a confidante and friend, for the General, like Mr. Jeliffe, was held in town by the late Congress.

Little-Lovely Leila was Little-Lonely Leila now. Yet after her collapse at the boat, she had shown her courage. She had put away childish things and was developing into a steadfast little woman, who busied herself with making her father happy. She watched over him and waited on him. And he who loved her wondered at her unexpected strength, not knowing that she was saying to herself, "I am a wife—not a child. And I mustn't make it hard for father—I mustn't make it hard for anybody. And when Barry comes back I shall be better fitted to share his life if I have learned to be brave."

She wrote to Barry—such cheerful letters, and one of them sent him to Gordon.

"It would have been better if I had brought her with me," he said, as he read extracts; "she's a little thing, Gordon, but she's a wonder. And she's the prop on which I lean."

"Presently you will be the prop," Gordon responded, "and that's what a husband should be, Barry, as you'll find out when you're married."

When!—if Gordon had only known how Barry dreamed of Leila—in her yellow gown, trudging by his side toward the church on the hill—dancing in the moonlight, a primrose swaying on its stem. How unquestioning had been her faith in him! And he must prove himself worthy of that faith.

And he did prove it by a steadiness which astonished Gordon, and by an industry which was almost unnatural, and he wrote to Leila, "I shall show them, dear heart, and then they'll let me have you."

It was on the night after Leila received this letter that Porter came to take her for a ride.

"Ask Mary to go with us," he said; "she won't go with me alone."

Leila's glance was sympathetic. "Did she say she wouldn't?"

"I asked her. And she said she was—tired. As if a ride wouldn't rest her," hotly.

"It would. You let me try her, Porter."

Leila's voice at the telephone was coaxing. "I want to go, Mary, dear, and Dad is busy at the Capitol, and——"

"But I said I wouldn't."

"Porter won't care, just so he gets you. He's at my elbow now, listening. And he says you are to ask Aunt Isabelle, and sit with her on the back seat if you want to be fussy."

"Leila," Porter was protesting, "I didn't say anything of the kind."

She went on regardless, "Well, if he didn't say it he meant it. And we want you, both of us, awfully."

Leila hanging up the receiver shook her head at Porter. "You don't know how to manage Mary. If you'd stay away from her for weeks—and not try to see her—she'd begin to wonder where you were."

"No she wouldn't." Porter's tone was weighted with woe. "She'd simply be glad, and she'd sit in her Tower Rooms and write letters to Roger Poole, and forget that I was on the earth."

It was out now—all his flaming jealousy. Leila stared at him. "Oh, Porter," she asked, breathlessly, "do you really think that she cares for Roger?"

"I know it."

"Has she told you?"

"Not—exactly. But she hasn't denied it. And he sha'n't have her. She belongs to me, Leila."

Leila sighed. "Oh, why should love affairs always go wrong?"

"Mine shall go right," Porter assured her grimly. "I'm not in this fight to give up, Leila."

When they took Mary in and Aunt Isabelle, Mary insisted that Leila should keep her seat beside Porter. "I'm dead tired," she said, "and I don't want to talk."

And now Porter, aiming strategically for Colin Quale's studio, took them everywhere else but in the direction of his objective point. But at last, after a long ride, they crossed the park which was faced by Colin's rooms.

"Have you seen Delilah's portrait?" Porter asked, casually.

They had not, and he knew it.

"If Colin's in, why not stop?"

They agreed and found Delilah there, and her father. The night was very hot, the room was faintly illumined by a hanging silver lamp in an alcove. From among the shadows, Delilah rose. "Colin is telephoning to the club for lemonades and things," she said; "he'll be back in a minute."

"We came to see your picture," Mary informed her.

"He is painting me again," Delilah said, "in the moonlight, like this."

She seated herself in the wide window, so that back of her was the silver haze of the glorious night Her dress of thin fine white was unrelieved.

Colin, coming in, set down his tray hastily and hastened to change the pose of her head. "It will be hard to get just the effect I want," he told them. "It must not be hard black and white, but luminous."

"I want them to see the other picture," Porter said.

Colin switched on the lights. "I'll never do better than this," he said.

"Do you like it, Mary?" Delilah asked. "It is the garden party dress."

"I love it," Mary said. "It isn't just the dress, Delilah. It's you. It's so joyous—as if you were expecting much of life."

"I am," Delilah said. "I'm expecting everything."

"And you'll get it," Colin stated. "You won't wait for any one to hand it to you; you'll simply reach out and take it."

Porter's eyes were searching. "Look here, Quale," he said, at last, "do you mind letting us see the others?—that Botticelli woman and the Fra Angelico—they show your versatility."

Colin hesitated. "They are crude beside this."

But Porter insisted. "They're charming. Trot them out, Quale."

So out they came—-the picture of the lank lady with the long face, and the picture of the little saint in red.

It was to the girl in red that they gave the most attention.

"How lovely she is," Mary said, "and how sweet."

But Delilah, observing closely, did not agree with her. "I'm not sure. Some women look like that who are little fiends. You haven't shown me this before, Colin. Who was she?"

Colin evaded. "Some one I knew a long time ago."

Porter was shaken inwardly by the thought that the little blond artist was proving himself a gentleman. He would not proclaim to the world what he had told Porter in confidence.

Porter's instincts, however, were purely primitive. He wanted to shout to the housetops, "That's the picture of Roger Poole's wife. Look at her and see how sweet she is. And then decide if she made her own unhappiness."

But he did not shout. He kept silent and watched Mary. She was still studying the picture attentively. "I don't see how you can say that she could be anything but sweet, Delilah. I think it is the face of a truthful child."

Porter's heart leaped. The time would come when he would tell her that the picture of the little trustful child was the picture of Roger Poole's wife. And then——

Colin had turned off the lights again. They sat now among the shadows and drank cool things and ate the marvelous little cakes which were a specialty of the pastry cook around the corner.

"In a week we'll all be away from here," Delilah said. "I wonder why we are so foolish. If it weren't for the fact that we've got the habit, we'd be just as comfortable at home."

"I shall be at home," Mary said. "I'm not entitled yet to a vacation."

"Don't you hate it?" Delilah demanded frankly.

Mary hesitated. "No, I don't. I can't say that I really like it—but it gave me quite a wonderful feeling to open my first pay envelope."

"Women have gone mad," Porter said. "They are deliberately turning away from womanly things to make machines of themselves."

Delilah, taking up the cudgels for Mary, demanded, "Is Mary turning her back on womanly things any more than I? I am making a business of capturing society—Mary is simply holding down her job until Romance butts into her life."

Colin stopped her. "I wish you'd put your twentieth century mind on your mid-Victorian clothes," he said, "and live up to them—in your language."

Delilah laughed. "Well, I told the truth if I didn't do it elegantly. We are both working for things which we want. Mary wants Romance and I want social recognition."

Leila sighed. "It isn't always what we want that we get, is it?" she asked, and Porter answered with decision, "It is not. Life throws us usually brickbats instead of bouquets."

Colin did not agree. "Life gives us sometimes more than we deserve. It has given me that picture of Miss Jeliffe. And I consider that a pretty big slice of good fortune."

"You're a nice boy, Colin," Delilah told him, "and I like you—and I like your philosophy. I fancy life is giving me as much as I deserve."

The others were silent. Life was not giving Leila or Porter or Mary at that moment the things that they wanted. Porter's demands on destiny were definite. He wanted Mary. Leila wanted Barry. Mary did not know what she wanted; she only knew that she was unsatisfied.

Porter took Leila home first, then drove Mary and Aunt Isabelle back through the park to the old house on the hill.

"I'm coming in," he said, as he helped Mary out of the car.

"But it is so late, Porter."

"I've been here lots of times as late as this. I won't be sent home, Mary, not to-night."

Aunt Isabelle, tired and sleepy, went at once up-stairs. Mary sat on the porch with Porter. Below them lay the city in the white moonlight. For a while they were silent, then Porter said, suddenly:

"Mary, there's something I want to tell you. You may think that I'm interfering in your affairs, but I can't help it. I can't see you doing things which will make you unhappy."

"I'm not unhappy. What do you mean, Porter?"

"You will be—if you go on as you are going. Mary—I took you to Colin's to-night on purpose, so that you could see the picture of the little saint in red, the Fra Angelico one."

"Yes."

"You know what you said about her—that she had such a trustful, childish face?"

"Yes."

"That was the picture of Roger Poole's wife, Mary."

She sat as still in her white dress as a marble statue.

At last she asked, "How do you know?"

"Quale told me. I fancy he hadn't heard that Poole had lived here, and that we knew him. So he let the name drop carelessly."

"Well?"

He turned on her flaming. "I know what you mean by that tone, Mary. But you're unjust. You think I've been meddling. But I haven't. It is only this. If Poole could break the heart of one woman, he can break the heart of another—and he sha'n't break yours."

"Who told you that he broke her heart?"

"You've seen the picture. Could a woman with a face like that do anything bad enough to wreck a man's life? I can't believe it, Mary. There are always two sides of a question."

She did not answer at once. Then she said, "How did you know about—Roger?"

"Delilah told me—he couldn't expect to keep it secret."

"He did not expect it; and he had much to bear."

"Then he has told you, and has pleaded with eloquence? But that child's face in the picture pleads with me."

It did plead. Remembering it, Mary was assailed by her first doubts. It was such a child's face, with saint's eyes.

Porter's voice was proceeding. "A man can always make out a case for himself. And you have only his word for what he did. Oh, I suppose you'll think I'm all sorts of a cad to talk this way. But I can't see you drifting, drifting toward a danger which may wreck your life."

"Why should it wreck my life?"

"Because Poole, whatever the merits of the case—doesn't seem to me strong enough to shape his destiny and yours. Was it strong for him to let go as he did, just because that woman failed him? Was it strong for him to hide himself here—like—like a criminal? A strong man would have faced the world. He would have tried to rise out of his wreck. His actions all through spell weakness. I could bear your not marrying me, Mary. But I can't bear to see you marry a man who isn't worthy of you. To see you unhappy would be torture for me."

In his earnestness he had struck a genuine note, and she recognized it.

"I know," she said, unsteadily. "I believe that you think you are fighting my battle, instead of your own. But I don't think Roger Poole would—lie."

"Not consciously. But he'd create the wrong impression—we can never see our own faults—and he would blame her, of course. But the man who has made one woman unhappy would make another unhappy, Mary."

Mary was shaken.

"Please don't put it so—inevitably. Roger hasn't any claim on me whatever."

"Hasn't he? Oh, Mary, hasn't he?"

There was hope in his voice, and she shrank from it.

"No," she said, gently, "he is just—my friend. As yet I can't believe evil of him. But I don't love him. I don't love anybody—I don't want any man in my life."

She thought that she meant it. She thought it, even while her heart was crying out in defense of the man he had maligned.

"How can one know the truth of such a thing?" she went on, unsteadily. "One can only believe in one's friends."

"Mary," eagerly, "you've known Poole only for a few months. You've known me always. I can give you a devotion equal to anybody's. Why not drop all this contrariness—and come to me?"

"Why not?" she asked herself. Roger Poole was obscure, and destined to be obscure. More than that, there would always be people like Porter who would question his past. "It is the whispers that kill," Roger had said. And people would always whisper.

She rose and walked to the end of the porch. Porter followed her, and they stood looking down into the garden. It was in a riot of summer bloom—and the fragrance rushed up to them.

The garden! And herself a flower! It was such things that Roger Poole could say, and which Porter could never say. And he could not say them because he could not think them. The things that Porter thought were commonplace, the things which Roger thought were wonderful. If she married Porter Bigelow, she would walk always with her feet firmly on the ground. If she married Roger Poole they would fly in the upper air together.

"Mary," Porter was insisting, "dear girl."

She held up her hand. "I won't listen," she said, almost passionately; "don't imagine things about me, Porter. I have my work—and my freedom—I won't give them up for anybody."

If she said the words with something less than her former confidence he was not aware of it. How could he know that she was making a last desperate stand?

When at last she sent him away, he went with an air of depression which touched her.

"I've risked being thought a cad," he said, "but I had to do it."

"I know. I don't blame you, dear boy."

She gave him her hand upon it, and he went away, and she was left alone in the moonlight.

And when the last echo of his purring car had died away into silence she went down and sat in the garden on the bench beside the hundred-leaved bush. Aunt Isabelle's light was still burning, and presently she would go up and say "Good-night," but for the moment she must be alone. Alone to face the doubts which were facing her. Suppose, oh, suppose, that the things which Roger had told her about his marriage had been distorted to make his story sound plausible? Suppose the little wife had suffered, had been driven from him by coldness, by cruelty? One never knew the real inner histories of such domestic tragedies. There was Leila, for example, who knew nothing of Barry's faults, and Barry had not told her. Might not other men have faults which they dared not tell? The world was full of just such tragedies.

When at last Mary reached the Tower Rooms, she undressed in the dark. She said her prayers in the dark, out loud, as had been her childish habit. And this was what she said: "Oh, Lord, I want to believe in Roger. Let me believe—don't let me doubt—let me believe."

When at last she slept, it was to dream and wake and to dream again. And waking or dreaming, out of the shadows came ghostly creatures, who whispered, "His little wife was a saint—how could she make him unhappy?" And again, "He may have been cruel, how do you know that he was not cruel?" And again, "If you were his wife, you would be thinking always of that other wife—thinking—thinking—thinking."



CHAPTER XX

In Which Mary Faces the Winter of Her Discontent; and in Which Delilah Sees Things in a Crystal Ball.

The summer slipped by, monotonously hot, languidly humid. And it was on these hot and humid days that Mary felt the grind of her new occupation. She grew to dread her entrance into the square close office room, with its gaunt desks and its unchanging occupants. She waxed restless through the hours of confinement, escaping thankfully at the end of a long day.

She longed for a whiff of the sea, for the deeps of some forest, for the fields of green which must be somewhere beyond the blue-gray haze which had settled over the shimmering city.

She began to show the effects of her unaccustomed drudgery. She grew pale and thin. Aunt Isabelle was worried. The two women sat much by the fountain. Mary had begged Aunt Isabelle to go away to some cooler spot. But the gentle lady had refused.

"This is home to me, my dear," she had said, "and I don't mind the heat. And there's no happiness for me in big hotels."

"There'd be happiness for me anywhere that I could get a breath of coolness," Mary said, restlessly. "I can hardly wait for the fall days."

Yet when the cooler days came, there was the dreariness of rain and of sighing winds. And now it was November, and Roger Poole had been away a year.

The garden was dead, and Mary was glad. Dead gardens seemed to fit into her mood better than those which bloomed. Resolutely she set herself to be cheerful; conscientiously, she told herself that she must live up to the theories which she had professed; sternly, she called herself to account that she did not exult in the freedom which she had craved. Constantly her mind warred with her heart, and her heart won; and she faced the truth that all seasons would be dreary without Roger Poole.

Her letters to him of late had lacked the spontaneity which had at first characterized them. She knew it, and tried to regain her old sense of ease and intimacy. But the doubts which Porter had planted had borne fruit. Always between her and Roger floated the vision of the little saint in red.

It was inevitable that Roger's letters should change. He ceased to show her the side which for a time he had so surprisingly revealed. Their correspondence became perfunctory—intermittent.

"It is my own fault," Mary told herself, yet the knowledge did not make things easier.

And now began the winter of her discontent. If any one had told her in her days of buoyant self-confidence that she would ever go to bed weary and wake up hopeless, she would have scorned the idea; yet the fact remained that the fruit of her independence was Dead Sea apples.

It was a letter from Barry which again brought her head up, and made her life march once more to a martial tune.

"I have found the work for which I am fitted," he wrote; "you don't know how good it seems. For so many years I went to my desk like a boy driven to school. But now—why, I work after hours for the sheer love of it—and because it seems to bring me nearer to Leila."

This from Barry, the dawdler! And she who had preached was whimpering about heat and cold, about long hours and hard work—as if these things matter!

Why, life was a Great Adventure, and she had forgotten!

And now she began to look about her—to find, if she could, some ray to illumine her workaday world.

She found it in the friendliness and companionship of her office comrades—good comrades they were—fighting the battle of drudgery shoulder to shoulder, sharing the fortunes of the road, needing, some of them, the uplift of her courage, giving some of them more than they asked.

As Mary grew into their lives, she grew away somewhat from her old crowd. And if, at times, her gallant fight seemed futile—if at times she could not still the cry of her heart, it was because she was a woman, made to be loved, fitted for finer things and truer things than writing cabalistic signs on a tablet and transcribing them, later, on the typewriter.

Leila had refused to be dropped from Mary's life. She came, whenever she could, to walk a part of the way home with her friend, and the two girls would board a car and ride to the edge of the town, preferring to tramp along the edges of the Soldiers' Home or through the Park to the more formal promenade through the city streets.

It was during these little adventures that Mary became conscious of certain reserves in the younger girl. She was closely confidential, yet the open frankness of the old days was gone.

Once Mary spoke of it. "You've grown up, all in a minute, Leila," she said. "You're such a quiet little mouse."

Leila sighed. "There's so much to think about."

Watching her, Mary decided. "It is harder for her than for Barry. He has his work. But she just waits and longs for him."

In waiting and longing, Little-Lovely Leila grew more mouse-like than ever. And at last Mary spoke to the General. "She needs a change."

He nodded. "I know it. I am thinking of taking her over in the spring."

"How lovely. Have you told her?"

"No—I thought it would be a grand surprise."

"Tell her now, dear General. She needs to look forward."

So the General, who had been kept in the house nearly all winter by his rheumatism, spoke of certain baths in Germany.

"I thought I'd go over and try them," he informed his small daughter, on the day after his talk with Mary, "and you could stop and call on Barry."

"Barry!" She made a little rush toward him. "Dad, Dad, do you mean it?"

"Yes."

She tucked her head into his shoulder and cried for happiness. "Dad, I've missed him so."

With this hope held out to her, Little-Lovely Leila grew radiant. Once more her feet danced along the halls, and the music of her voice trilled bird-like in the big rooms.

Delilah, discussing it with her artist, said: "Leila makes me believe in Romance with a big R. But I couldn't love like that."

Colin smiled. "You'd love like a lioness. I've subdued you outwardly, but within you are still primitive."

"I wonder——" Delilah mused.

"The man for you," Colin turned to her suddenly, "is Porter Bigelow. Of course I'm taking it from the artist's point of view. You're made for each other—a pair of young gods—his red head just topping your black one—It was that way at the garden party; any one could see it."

Delilah laughed. "His eyes aren't for me. With him it is Mary Ballard. If I were in love with him, I should hate Mary. But I don't; I love her. And she's in love with Roger Poole."

Colin looked up from the samples from which he and Delilah were choosing her spring wardrobe.

"Poole? I knew his wife," he said abruptly; "it was her picture that I showed you the other night—the little saint in the Fra Angelico pose—it didn't come to me until afterward that he might be the same Poole of whom I had heard you speak."

Delilah swept across the room, and turned the canvas outward. "Roger Poole's wife," she said, "of all things!" Then she stood staring silently.

"You didn't tell us who she was."

"No," he was weighing mentally Porter's attitude in the matter, "no one knew but Bigelow."

"And he showed this to Mary?" They looked at each other, and laughed. "Perhaps all's fair in love," Delilah murmured, at last, "but I wouldn't have believed it of him."

As she turned the picture toward the wall, Delilah decided, "Mary Ballard is worth a hundred of such women as this."

"A woman like you is worth a hundred of them," Colin stated deliberately.

Delilah flushed faintly. Colin Quale was giving to her something which no other man had given. And she liked it.

"Do you know what you are doing to me?" she said, as she sat down by the window. "You are making me think that I am like the pictures you paint of me."

"You are," was the quiet response; "it's just a matter of getting beneath the surface."

There was a pause during which his fingers and eyes were busy with the shining samples—then Delilah said: "If Leila and her father go to Germany in May, I'm going to get Dad to go too. I don't suppose you'd care to join us? You'll want to get back to that girl in Amesbury or Newburyport, or whatever it is."

"What girl?"

"The one you are going to marry."

"There is no girl," said Colin quietly, "in Amesbury or Newburyport; there never has been and there never will be." Coming close, he held against her cheek a sample of soft pale yellow. "Leila Dick wears that a lot, but it's not for you." He stood back and gazed at her meditatively.

"Colin," she protested, "when you look at me that way, I feel like a wooden model."

He smiled, "That's what you have come to mean to me," he said; "I don't want to think of you as a woman."

"Why not?" asked daring Delilah.

"Because it is, to say the least, disturbing."

He occupied himself with his samples, shaking his head over them.

"None of these will do for the Secretary's dinner. You must have lace with many flounces caught up in the new fashion. And I shall want your hair different. Take it down."

She was used to him now, and presently it fell about her in all its shining sable beauty; and as he separated the strands, it was like a thing alive under his hands.

He crowned her head with the braids in a sort of old-fashioned coronet. And so arranged, the old fashion became a new fashion, and Delilah was like a queen.

"You see—with the lace and your pearl ornaments. There is nothing startling; but no one will be like you."

And there was no one like her. And because of the dress, which Colin had planned, and because of the way which he had taught her to do her hair, Delilah annexed to her train of admirers on the night of the Secretary's dinner a distinguished titled gentleman, who was looking for a wife to grace his ancestral halls—and who was impressed mightily by the fact that Delilah looked the part to perfection.

He proposed to her in three weeks, and was so sure of his ability to get what he wanted that he was stunned by her answer:

"Perhaps I'll make up my mind to it. I'll give you your answer when I come over in the spring."

"But I want my answer now."

"I'm sorry. But I can't."

When she told Colin of her abrupt dismissal of the discomfited gentleman, she asked, almost plaintively, "Why couldn't I say 'yes' at once? It is the thing I've always wanted."

"Have you really wanted it?"

"Of course."

"Not of course. You want other things more."

"What for example?"

"I think you know."

She did know, and she drew a quick breath. Then laughed.

"You're trying to teach me to understand my—emotions, Colin, as you have taught me to understand my clothes."

"You're an apt pupil."

Tea came in, just then, and she poured for him, telling his fortune afterward in his teacup.

"Are you superstitious?" she asked him, having worked out a future of conventional happiness and success.

"Not enough to believe what you have told me." He was flickering his pale lashes and smiling. "Life shall bring me what I want because I shall make it come."

"Oh, you think that?"

"Yes. All things are possible to those of us who believe they are possible."

"Perhaps to a man. But—to a woman. There's Leila, for example. I'm afraid——"

"You mustn't be. Life will come right for her."

"How do you know?"

"It comes right for all of us, in one way or another. You'll find it works out. You're afraid for your little friend because of Ballard—he's pretty gay, eh?"

"Yes. More, I think, than she understands. But everybody else knows that they sent him away for that. And I can't see any way out. If he marries her he'll break her heart; if he doesn't marry her he'll break it—and there you have it."