"Oh, Pat!" It was all that Joan could think of saying.

Patricia was rushing on.

"Very well, then! Now, listen, lamb, you and I are going to skip and skip at once. I'm done up. A change is all that will save me—and you've got to go with me!"

"Yes, yes, Pat!"

"Why, child, a step on the stairs is giving us electric shocks. This lease is up in October. I'll telegraph Syl to-day. She can make her own arrangements after that—we'll leave things safe here and get out to-morrow!"

Suddenly Joan got up and threw her hands over her head.

"Thank heaven!" was what she cried aloud.

There was much rush and flurry after that, and in the excitement the nervous tension relaxed.

A note, a most bewildering one, was posted to Elspeth Gordon. It came at a moment when Miss Gordon greatly needed Joan and was most annoyed at her non-appearance. It simply stated:

Something has happened—I'm going at once to Chicago with Pat.

Now as Patricia had been an unknown quantity to Miss Gordon—her relations with Joan being purely those of business—she raised her brows with all the inherited conservatism of her churchly ancestors and steeled her heart—as they often had.

"Temperamental!" sniffed Miss Gordon, "utterly lacking in honour. Just as I might have expected. A poor prospect for—Pat! I do not envy the gentleman."

Miss Gordon had contempt instead of passion, but her resentment was none the less.

And it was at high tide when Raymond came in at four-thirty for a cup of tea and what comfort he could obtain by seeing how Joan had survived the storm. He was met by blank absence and a secret and unchristian desire on Miss Gordon's part to hurt Joan.

Miss Gordon had not been entirely unobservant of all that had been going on. She had had her qualms, but business must be business, and so long as Joan did not interfere with that she had not felt called upon to remonstrate with her on her growing friendliness with the protege of Mrs. Tweksbury.

But now things were changed and by Joan's own bad behaviour.

Raymond looked sadly in need of tea and every other comfort available—he was positively haggard.

While he sipped his tea he was watching, watching. So was Miss Gordon. Finally, he could stand it no longer and he spoke to her as she was passing.

"Your little sibyl—she is not here? On a vacation, I suppose?"

This was futile and cheap and Raymond felt that he flushed.

Miss Gordon poised for action. Her face grew grave and hard—she believed she was quite within her just rights when she sought to protect this very handsome and worth-while young man. She really should have done it before! She was convinced of that now.

"My assistant," she said, "has left without giving the usual notice. She has left me in a most embarrassing position but I suppose she felt her own personal affairs were paramount.

"I—I think she has made a hasty marriage." On the whole, this seemed more kind than Joan deserved.

"A—what?" Raymond almost forgot himself. "A—what—did you say?"

"Well, I presume it was marriage. She simply stated that something had occurred that was taking her to Chicago at once with a young man."

Elspeth Gordon watched the face of Mrs. Tweksbury's adopted son. She felt she was serving a righteous cause. If any worthy young man came to harm from the folly she had permitted she could never forgive herself! Miss Gordon had an elastic conscience.

Raymond's countenance grew suddenly blank. He had recovered his self-control. He laughed presently—it was a light, well-modulated laugh, not the laugh of a shocked or very much interested man.

Miss Gordon was relieved—but disappointed.

And then Raymond went out to do his thinking alone. He walked the streets as people often do who are lonely and can find relief in action.

He had never been so confused in his life, but then, he reflected, what did he really know about the girl with whom he had spent so many happy, sweet, unforgettable hours? The one black hour through which she had, somehow, stood as the only tangible safe thing he could recall, had shattered his faith in himself, in everything.

What was she? Who was she? And now she had gone—with some man! It sounded cruel and harsh—but it could not, it never could, blot out certain memories which lay deep in Raymond's mind. He was miserable beyond words. He deplored his own part in the unhappy affair; he could not adjust himself to the inevitable—the end of the amazing and romantic episode.

Of course he had always known that it must end some time, but while he drifted damnably he had not given much thought to that. But now he had finished it by his own beastiality when, had he kept his head, it might have passed as it came—a thing undefiled; a beautiful, tender memory.

Perhaps—and at this Raymond shuddered—perhaps he had driven the girl upon a reef. He had heard of such things. In despair she had violently taken herself out of his reach. He could not believe she had been seriously involved while she played with him. Whatever she was, he could but believe that she was innocent in her regard for him—else why this mad flight? And he could not believe that her regard for him was serious. He was humble enough.

After leaving Joan the night before Raymond had met his Other Self squarely in the shrouded house. Toward morning he had come to a conclusion: he was prepared to pay to the uttermost for his folly, whatever the demand might be. She must be the judge.

He would go to the tea room—not to the house that he had so brutally invaded. He would again talk to the girl and watch her—he would make her understand that he was not as weak as he might seem. If he had misunderstood, that should not exempt him from responsibility. But if she should spurn any attempt of his to remedy the evil he could regard himself with a comparatively clean conscience.

Raymond could not get away from the idea that the girl was of his world—the world where he was supposed, by Mrs. Tweksbury and her kind, to constantly be.

But then the empty tea room—and how empty it was!—stared him blankly in the face. Miss Gordon's manner angered him beyond expression. Almost he felt he must tell her of his own low part in the tragedy in order to place her beside the girl he had insulted, instead of beside him, as he felt she was.

Raymond was hurt, disappointed, and disgusted; but as the day wore on a grave and common-sense wave of relief flooded his consciousness. Bad as things had been, they might, God knows, have been worse. As it was, with the best of intentions, he was set aside by the girl's own conduct of her affairs.

To seek her further would be the greatest of folly and then, toward night, lonely, half ill, Raymond undertook that time-honoured custom of turning over a new leaf only to find that it stuck to the old persistently!

Then he resorted to a sensible alternative—he read and re-read the old page. He tried to understand it line by line. He was humbled; filled with shame at his meaningless attitude of the past, and acknowledged that the grit in him, that he had hoped was sand, was, after all, the dirt that could easily defile. He must begin anew and rebuild. He must take nothing for granted in himself. Having arrived at that conclusion, the leaf turned!

And Joan, in like manner, thrashed about. It was not so much her actions that caused her alarm—she had played most sincerely—but it was the power behind the play that caused her to tremble and grow hot and cold. What was it within her that had driven her where wiser girls would fear to stray? What was it that was not love in the least and yet had caused her heart to beat at Raymond's touch or glance? Whatever it was, Joan concluded, it could not be depended upon. It could lay waste every holy spot unless it were understood and controlled, and Joan set herself to the task.

The first step was to get away. That was inevitable.

After a few months—and Joan was sure Patricia could not run in harness longer than that—they could both come back, saner and better women. Then Doris would be called into action; no more butting against the pricks and calling it freedom!

In the meantime, Patricia and Joan worked madly to get away and still secure Sylvia's interests.

Telegrams passed to and fro. Sylvia was fair enough to see both sides, and while she was irritated at being disturbed she did not resent it and even bade Patricia and Joan success with honest enthusiasm.

"I'll run back and see to things," she wrote; "I'm making a lot of money."

And then Patricia tucked Joan, so to speak, under her frail wing and took to flight.

Chicago was new territory to both the girls but Patricia, from the necessity, as she told Joan, of grubbing, had become an adept at finding shelter.

After a week at a hotel, while she settled herself in business, Patricia had free hours for home-hunting, and she and Joan made a lark of it.

Patricia had the enviable power of shutting business from her own time, and she quickly discerned that Joan needed prompt and definite interests to hold her to what they had undertaken.

And the venture had suddenly assumed gigantic proportions to Patricia. She feverishly desired it to be a success.

She realized that Joan was being torn by conflicting emotions while she was idle and alone. She asked no questions; appeared not to notice Joan's teary eyes and pensive mouth. Wisely she made Joan feel her own need of her—to that Joan responded at once.

"Joan, I never had a home in my life before," she confided while they flitted from one apartment to another. "I used to walk around in strange cities and peep in people's windows, just to see homes!

"After my father died, I rustled about on the little money he left, and I got to sneaking into other women's homes. I didn't mean harm at first, but after awhile it seemed so easy to sneak and so hard to—make good! But down in my heart, as truly as God hears me, I've been homesick for—what I never had."

"Pat! Of all things—you are crying!" Joan looked frightened.

"Well, let me cry!" sniveled Patricia. "I've never given myself that luxury, either."

For a moment there was silence broken only by Patricia's sniffs. Then:

"What do your folks say about it, Joan?"

"I haven't sent the big letter yet—it's written. I don't want them to say anything until I'm fixed. I only told them of our leaving New York."

"Whew!" ejaculated Patricia. "You certainly run your career free-handed."

"Aunt Dorrie will take it like the darling she is," Joan mused on, "and she'll make Nan and Doctor Martin see it. When she gave me my chance she did not tie a string to me—not even the string of her love. We understand each other perfectly."

"I suppose you know," Patricia gave a sigh, "but I don't think an explanation would hurt any and I don't want her to blame me more than I deserve, Joan."

"Blame you, Pat? Why, how could she?"

"Oh, I don't know. She might get to thinking on her own hook if you don't give her the facts. Joan, send the letter at once!"

So Joan dispatched the letter, and it had the effect of depressing Nancy to an alarming degree and, in consequence, of spurring Doris to renewed effort.

She was perturbed by the lack of what she knew. She had her doubts of Patricia; the sudden flight had an aspect of rout—what did it mean?

Her reply to Joan, however, was much what Martin's would have been to his nephew.

She accepted and took on faith what Joan had explained—or failed to explain.

She laid emphasis on plans for the coming winter and referred to Joan's promise to give herself seriously to her music.

"Either in New York or there, my dear, begin your real work. It is all well enough to look about before you decide, but there is a time for decision."

This letter put Joan on her mettle.

"Pat, I'm going to begin as soon as we've settled," she declared, and her wet eyes shone. "Aunt Dorrie is quite right."

The girls finally secured four pretty, sunny rooms overlooking the lake, and reverently selected the furniture for them.

"Let's get things artistic," Patricia wisely explained, "we'll make the place unique and then"—for Patricia always left, if possible, a way open for retreat—"if we should ever want to dispose of it, we'd have a good market."

But as the days passed it looked as if the venture were turning out better than one could have hoped. Joan had never felt so important in her life, and, to her surprise, developed possibilities never suspected before. She prepared for Patricia's homecomings with the keenest delight. The cozy, charming little dinners, the evenings by the open fire—for they had selected the rooms largely on account of the fireplace—or the occasional theatre or concert grew in delight. Patricia was the merriest of comrades, the most appreciative of partners. She also, to her own surprise, became deeply interested in her work and, while the hours and confinement sometimes irritated her, her field of invention was wide enough to employ her real talent, and her success was assured from the first.

And when things were running smoothly and there were hours too empty for comfort in the lonely day, Joan discovered a professor of music who gave her much encouragement and some good advice.

After this interview she wrote to Doris more frankly than she had done for a long time. She explained her financial situation and quite simply asked for help:

It's very expensive learning not to be a fool, Aunt Doris. I have proved that. I am very serious now and Chicago, with Pat, is better for me than New York with Sylvia.

What I really want is to prove myself a bit before I come back to you. I'm sorry about this winter, dear, but a year more and I will be able to come to you not on my shield, I hope, but with it in fairly good condition.

"I think you ought to make her keep her promise about this winter," Nancy quivered; "she is always upsetting things."

"Why, my little Nan!" Doris drew the girl to her. Oddly enough, she felt as if Nancy was all that she was ever to have. Never before had Joan sounded so determined.

"Instead," Doris comforted, "I am going to help Joan prove herself and you and I, little girl, will go up to town and have a very happy, a very wonderful winter, and next summer, if Joan does not come to us, we will go to her. I think we all see things very clearly now."

Nancy was not so sure of this but she, like Joan and Patricia, had felt the lash upon her back and was chafing at delay.

Mary worked early and late to hasten the departure from The Gap. Always in Mary's consciousness was that threatening old woman on Thunder Peak.

With care and comfort old Becky was more alert; more suspicious. She was wondering why. And Mary felt that at any time she might defeat what daily was gaining a hold on Mary's suspicions. The woman tried hard to shield the secret from her own curiosity, but under all else lay the conviction that it was Nancy's toys which were in peril. And gradually the love that the silent, morose woman felt for the girl absorbed all other emotions. It was like having banked everything on a desired hope she was prepared to defend it. If her suspicions were true, then all the more must the secret be hid.

And so in November Doris and Nancy went to New York and Mary, apparently unmoved, saw them depart while she counted anew her assumed duties.

There was The Peak—and with winter to complicate her duties, it loomed ominously.

"And I'll have to back letters for old Jed." Mary had promised to write for the old man and to read from the Bible to him, as Nancy had always done. "And keep the old man alive as well." Mary sighed wearily. "And when there's a minute to rest—keep my own place decent." The cabin was the one bright thought and, because of that which had made the cabin possible, Mary bowed her back to her burdens.

"A strange woman is Mary," Doris confided to Nancy; "nothing seems to make any impression upon her."

Nancy opened her lovely blue eyes wide at this.

"Why, Aunt Dorrie," she replied, "Mary would die for us—and never mention it. She's made that still, faithful way."

Doris smiled, but did not change her mind. The people of the hills were never to be to her what they had been to Sister Angela—her people.



CHAPTER XX

"It Is Felicity on Her Wings."

The old New York house was once more opened and the fountain set free. Birds sang and flowers bloomed, but Joan was not there and for a blank but silent moment both Doris and Nancy wondered if the lack were to defeat them. The moment was appalling but it passed.

Felicity brooded over them and her wings did not droop.

Martin, with his sound common sense, came to the fore among the first. He was never more alert. His nephew, Clive Cameron, was entrenched in Martin's office and home—his name, alone, shone on the new sign.

"I've flung you in neck and crop, Bud, because I believe in you and have told my patients so. Sink or swim, but you've got clear water to do it in. I'll hang around—make my city headquarters with you; lend myself to you; but for the rest I'm going to do exactly what I want to do—for a time."

Cameron regarded his uncle as the young often do the older—yearningly, covetously, tenderly.

"I—I think I understand about Miss Fletcher, Uncle Dave," he said.

"I had hoped you did, boy. And remember this—it's only when a woman gets so into your system that she cannot be purged out, that you dare to be sure."

"But, Uncle Dave, the knowledge—what has it done for you?"

"You'll never be able to understand that, Bud, until you're past the age of asking the question."

And having settled that to his satisfaction, Martin turned resolutely to what threatened Doris and Nancy.

He meant to see fair play. Doris could be depended upon for a few strenuous months if her friends turned to and helped her as they should.

Nancy must no longer be sacrificed!

"If there is any sense in this tomfoolery about Joan," Martin mused, "it must apply to Nancy also."

Martin was extremely fond of Nancy. He often wished she would not lean so heavily, but then his spiritual ideal of a woman was after Nancy's design. Of Joan he disapproved, and Doris was a type apart.

"If we can marry Nancy off," plotted Martin—and he had his mind's eye on his nephew—"I'll bring Sister on from the West and get Doris to share Ridge House with us. Queer combination, but safe!"

And then he saw, as in a vision, the peaceful years on ahead. He would hold Doris's hand down the westering way. Hold it close and warm; never looking for more than the blessed companionship. And his sister, happy and content, would share the way with them and Nancy's children—would they be Clive's also?—would gladden all their hearts. And Joan?—well, Martin did not feel that Joan needed his architectural aid—she was chopping and hacking her own design.

At this point Martin sought Emily Tweksbury and bullied her into action.

Mrs. Tweksbury had not unpacked her trunks yet and was sorely depressed about Raymond.

"I wish I had stuck to Maine," she deplored, "and devoted myself to the boy. He looks like a fallen angel.

"Ken, what have you been doing to yourself?" she had asked.

"Just pegging away, Aunt Emily."

"Ken," Mrs. Tweksbury had an awful habit of felling the obvious by a blow of her common-sense hatchet; "Ken, you've got to be married. You're not the kind to float around town and enjoy it—and you are the kind that would enjoy the other."

"Oh! I'm having a bully time, Aunt Emily."

"That's not true, Ken. Life lacks salt; you look the need of it and I blame myself for going abroad."

"I'm glad you went!" fervently said Raymond.

"You are, eh? Well, I'm not going again until you're safely married."

At this Raymond found that he could laugh, and just then the hatchet fell, for Doctor Martin had entered the arena and Mrs. Tweksbury had agreed to help.

"Do you remember my speaking of that niece of Miss Fletcher's last spring?" she asked.

"Yes. I do recall it. Wasn't she to come here—or something like that?"

"Yes, she was, but she isn't. Doris Fletcher has brought her girl up to town herself and the old house is opened. I called there the other day. Ken, that girl is the loveliest thing I ever saw!"

"Is she?" Raymond was sitting on the edge of the table in Mrs. Tweksbury's dressing room. When she got through talking he was going to bed. He had to stifle a yawn.

"Yes, she is. She's not only the prettiest girl I've seen for many a year, but she's the girl."

"For what?" Raymond swung his lifted foot while he balanced with the other.

"For you, Ken!" The crash unsettled Raymond and he brought his free foot to the floor.

"Oh! come," he blurted; "don't begin that sort of rubbish, Aunt Emily. I thought you were above that."

"I'm not, Ken. I would go slow if I dared, but this girl will be snapped up before we get in touch with her, unless we act quick."

"Aunt Emily! For heaven's sake, is the girl hanging about open-mouthed for the first hook tossed to her?"

"No. But, Ken, she is the kind that men want—the kind they hold sacred in their souls and hardly dare hope ever to see in the flesh. The girl made me want to grab her. I remember as a child she was charming—she's a perfect, but very human, woman now."

With this Mrs. Tweksbury dilated upon what Doris had confided of Nancy's loyal and devoted life.

"You see, Ken," Mrs. Tweksbury ran on, "the girl is like a rare thing that you cannot debate much about, and once lost, the opportunity will never come again. I've gone off about her, Ken."

"I should say you had! Will you smoke, Aunt Emily?"

"Yes!"

To see Emily Tweksbury smoke was about as incongruous as to see an antique remodelled to bring it up to date; but the smoke calmed her.

"You will call with me upon her, won't you, Ken?"

"With pleasure."

Raymond felt that any compromise would be well to offer.

"I'll do my best by her, too, Aunt Emily. I rather shy at perfect types; girls, at the best, make me skittish. They make me think of myself and then I get gawky."

"You'll forget yourself when you see Nancy Thornton."

"Nancy—queer old name for a modern girl!" The two puffed away like old cronies—Raymond had got into a chair now and Mrs. Tweksbury had relaxed, also.

"She isn't modern!"

"No? What then, Aunt Emily?"

"Ken, she's just woman. She appears just once so often, like a prophet or something, that keeps your faith alive. She's the kind that the Bible calls 'blessed,' and if she didn't reappear now and then I think the race would perish."

"Ugh!" grunted Raymond. Then added: "Calm down, Aunt Emily, go slow. When you lose your head you're apt to buck."

Mrs. Tweksbury laughed at this and helped herself to another cigarette.

It was a week later that Raymond met Nancy at his aunt's dinner table. He knew she was coming. At least he thought he knew—but when he saw her he felt that he had not expected her at all.

It was a small party: Doris Fletcher, Doctor Martin, young Doctor Cameron, and Nancy.

Nancy came into the dim old drawing room behind young Cameron. It was that fact that attracted Raymond first. He recalled what Mrs. Tweksbury had said about the type being the ideal of man—or something like that—and Cameron, whom he had just met a few weeks before, had apparently got into action.

After Nancy came Doctor Martin—it was as if the male element surrounded the girl.

She was rather breath-taking and radiant. She wore a coral-pink satin gown, very short and narrow. Her pretty feet were shod in pink stockings and satin slippers. Her dainty arms and neck were white and smooth, and her glorious fair hair was held in place by a string of coral beads.

There are a good many platitudes that are really staggering facts.

"Caught on the rebound," is one.

Raymond was more open to certain emotions than he had ever been in his life. He was sore and bruised; he had lost several beliefs in himself—and was completely ignorant of the big thing that had given him new strength.

He had had the vision of passion through the wrong lens; he had been blinded by the close range, but he knew what the vision was. In that he had the advantage of poor Joan.

His youth cried out for Youth; he wanted what he had all but lost the right to have. But he in no sense just then wanted Nancy; it was what she represented. She was what Mrs. Tweksbury had said, the kind of girl that men enshrine in their souls and never replace even when they gladly accept a substitute.

"If only——" and then Raymond's eyes looked queer. He was living over the black hour which he did not realize was the hour of his soul's birth. He'd never have that battle again, he inwardly swore, but that was poor comfort.

And then, while talking to Nancy, he grew very gay and light-hearted, like someone who had made a safe passage past the siren's rocks. Not that it mattered, except that one did not want to be shipwrecked. Of course, Raymond knew, he wouldn't forget while he lived, the other thing just past, but it had not wrecked him.

After that dinner nothing would have happened if all sorts of pressure had not been brought to bear. Raymond was affectionately inclined to be kind to Mrs. Tweksbury because he knew he had wronged her faith in him, though she would never know; so he accompanied her whenever she beckoned, and she beckoned frequently and always toward Nancy.

Then Clive Cameron happened, at the crucial moment, to be on the middle of the stage for the same reasons that Raymond was there. Cameron followed Martin's vigorous beckoning, although he was bored to the limit. He liked Nancy and thought her very beautiful, but Cameron had not enshrined any type of woman—a few men are like that. He knew, because he was young and vital and sane, that he had a shrine, or pedestal, in his make-up and if, at any time, he saw a girl that made him forget, for a moment, the profession that was absorbing him just then, he'd humbly implore her to fill the empty niche and after that he would do the glorifying. But if it pleased his uncle to trot him about, he went with charming grace; and because it did not affect him in the least, he played almost boisterously with Nancy and made her jollier than she had ever been in her life.

He made her forget things! Forget The Gap!

Cameron simply knocked unpleasant memories into limbo; he was like a fresh northwest wind—he revived everyone. He made Doris think of David Martin as she first knew him—and naturally Doris adored Cameron. She came near praying that Nancy might, after a fashion, pay her debts for her. But no! she would not influence Nancy—she must be respected in her beautiful freedom as Joan was in hers.

So Doris widened the field of Nancy's vision, and old friends came happily to the front.

It is not wholly ignoble, the marriage market. To understand the game of life is to be prepared, and women like Doris Fletcher were not entirely self-seeking when they presented their best to what they believed should be the best. Nancy was worthy, as Martin often said, to carry on the truest American tradition of womanhood, so it became a reverent concern to help this matter personally, and nationally, on its course.

Young men swarmed about Nancy because, as Mrs. Tweksbury truly said, the ideal was in their hearts and they were stirred by it.

And Nancy was radiant and lovely. She blossomed and throbbed—she was happy and appreciative. She was charming to everyone, but ran to Cameron for safety and kept her sweet eyes on Raymond.

So secretly did she do this that no one but Cameron suspected it. The perfectly serene atmosphere that surrounded him and Nancy permitted him to understand the state of affairs.

When a girl uses a man as a buffer between her and others he does not confuse things.

For a short time Cameron debated as to which particular man Nancy wanted him to save her for while he was preserving her from the mass. It did not take him long to decide. He grinned at the truth when it struck him. He was surprised, as men usually are, at a woman's choice of males. Cameron liked Raymond; thought him a good sort, but herd-bound.

"But Nancy's got the brand mark, too," he reflected. "They're both headed in the same direction, only Raymond doesn't know it—a woman always finds things out first, and it's up to me, I guess, to lasso Raymond for her."

So Cameron took up the "big brother" burden and steered the unsuspecting Raymond to his fate.

Cameron did this in a masterly way. He blinded everyone except Nancy.

Doris sighed with content, and Martin lifted his eyes in praise and gratitude. Mrs. Tweksbury, like a war-horse smelling powder, saw danger to her plans and quickened Raymond to what was going on.

At first Raymond was relieved—he wished Cameron good luck. Having done that, he began to wonder if he really did?

There was something unutterably sweet about Nancy: she was so purely the kind of woman that made life a success. Why should he play straight into Cameron's hand? If Nancy really preferred Cameron, why, then—but did she?

This was interesting. He took to watching; presently he concluded that Cameron was a conceited ass.

After a short time Raymond began to feel the pressure of Nancy's little body in his arms—when their dance was over. He began to resent other arms about her. Her eyes were lovely—so blue and sympathetic. She never set a man guessing. Raymond had had enough of guessing!

About that time Mrs. Tweksbury added an urge to her heart's desire that she little suspected.

"Ken," she remarked one morning, "I dropped into the Brier Tea Room yesterday." It was the brier that signified the meaning of the place to the old lady.

"Do you remember?"

Raymond nodded. Did he not remember!

"The place is quite ordinary now—but the food is still superior. Miss Gordon has come to her senses."

"Has she?" Raymond asked, lamely.

"Yes. And that girl—do you remember her, Ken?"

Raymond nodded again.

"Just as one might expect," Mrs. Tweksbury rattled on, keeping to her one-tracked idea of things, "the minx ran off with a man, never considering Miss Gordon at all."

"I doubt if Miss Gordon could see any one's side but her own," ventured Raymond.

"Ken, that's unjust. The girl was a little fraud, and I think Miss Gordon is heartily ashamed of herself for having resorted to such cheap methods to get trade. She has young Scotch girls helping her now. No more tricks, says Miss Gordon."

There was a pause.

"I thought for a time, Ken, that that girl was one of our kind—risking far too much. I'm not usually mistaken in blood, but—the creature was a good counterfeit; I'm glad she's gone. Say what you will, we older women know the young man needs protection as well as the young women."

"Oh! Aunt Emily, cut it out!"

Raymond got up and stalked about. This added to Mrs. Tweksbury's uneasiness.

For days after that talk Raymond had his uncomfortable hours. He wished he knew about the girl of the tea room. It was "the girl" now. If she were only unscathed the future would be safer for everyone.

But how could he—Raymond was getting into the meshes—how could he run to safety and happiness and forget, if he had really harmed, in any way, a girl who might have cared? The difference between playing with fire and being burned by fire was clear now.

Had that hour, when the beast in him rampaged, killed forever the ideal she had had? Was she saved by his madness? Or had she been driven on the rocks? If he only knew!

Raymond still had moments when he believed that the girl would materialize in his own safeguarded world. He had seen a resemblance now and then that turned him cold, but when all was said and done there was no reason, no unforgivable reason, for him to exile himself from life.

And when he was in this state of mind, Cameron was like vinegar on a raw wound to him. Cameron's joyousness, born of indifference, passed for assurance based, as Raymond believed, on his asinine conceit.

"He takes Nancy for granted," Raymond grumbled, "and he need not be too sure—why, only last night——"

Then Raymond recalled the look in Nancy's eyes.

As a matter of fact, while Raymond was no better nor worse than the average young man visiting the marriage market, Nancy had selected him for worship and glorification. He loomed high and then, suddenly, he loomed alone!

There is that in woman which selects for its own. It is not merely the instinct of mating, it is choice, in the main, and makes either for success or failure—but it always has its compensations in that vague, groping sense that calls for its own. The world may look on wondering or dismayed, but the woman, under the crude exterior, clings to the ideal she sought.

With Nancy and Raymond conditions favoured the moment. Nancy had a wide choice and she was radiantly happy. Doris saw to it that the girl should see and hear the best of everything and be free to live her days unfettered.

Raymond had inherited the purest desires for family and home—he had never seen them gratified in his parents' life, so they still lay dormant in his heart. Nancy presently awakened them and Cameron's mistaken attitude drove them into action.

Raymond counted Nancy's charms. Her devotion to her aunt, her unselfish service while her twin sister followed her own devices, Doctor Martin's very pronounced admiration, and Mrs. Tweksbury's ardent affection all carried him along like favouring winds. And presently the constant appearance of Cameron with Nancy lashed Raymond to the amazing conviction that he was in love!

He grew pale and abstracted; the revealment was pouring like light and sun into the depths of his nature. He wished that he was a better man; he thanked whatever god he reverenced that he was not a worse one. He recalled the one foolish episode of his youth with contempt for his weakness and gratitude for the escape—not only for himself but for the unknown girl.

As a proof of the sincerity of his present change of heart he wished above everything that he might find the girl and confess to her, for he felt, beyond doubt, that it would give her joy.

He believed this, not because he wanted to believe it, but because he felt the truth of it, and presently it gave him courage.

But there was Cameron!

Finally Raymond discovered that his business was suffering. He grew indifferent to the exact hour of leaving his office; took no pride in his well-regulated habits. He began to dislike Cameron and he dreamed of Nancy. Day and night he saw her as the safe and sweet solution of all that was best in him. She held sacred what his inheritance reverenced; she was human and divine; she was his salvation—or Cameron's.

At this point Mrs. Tweksbury gave him an unlooked-for stab.

"Well!" she remarked with a groan—she never sighed, "I guess Clive Cameron has got in at the death!"

She looked gruesome and defeated. Raymond grew hot and cold.

"What do you mean?" he asked, and glared shamelessly.

"I mean," Mrs. Tweksbury confronted Raymond as if repudiating him forever, "I mean that you've let the chance of your life slip through your fingers and fall into the gaping mouth of that Clive Cameron. It's disgusting, nothing less!"

"Aunt Emily! What in thunder do you mean? Nancy Thornton has only been here a month; if she's so easily gobbled"—the discussion waxed crude—"I'm sure I could not prevent it—I'm not a gobbler."

"No—you're a fool!"

"Come, come, Aunt Emily." Raymond flushed and Mrs. Tweksbury grew mahogany-tinted.

"Oh! I know"—two tears—they were like solid balls—rolled down the deep red cheeks. Almost it seemed that they would make a noise when they landed on the expansive bosom.—"I sound brutal, but I'm the female of the species and it hurts to know defeat the—the second time."

"The—second—time?" gasped Raymond.

"Yes—your father! I could—oh! Ken, it is no shame to say it to you—but I could have made him happy, but it came, the chance, too late. Then when you came I pledged my soul that I would try to secure your happiness. I know what you want, need, and deserve, and here is this perfect child—the one woman for you, snatched from under your nose by Clive Cameron who will—" Emily Tweksbury sought for a figure of speech—"who will, without doubt, end in dissecting her!"

"Good Lord!" gasped Raymond. The dramatic choice of words was unnerving him.

"Oh! you men," spluttered Mrs. Tweksbury. "You make me weary—disgusted; you're no more fit to manage your affairs than babies, and your monumental conceit drives sensible women crazy. We ought to ask you to marry us. We ought not wait to see you ruin yourselves and us, too."

"But, Aunt Emily, why in thunder do you think Nancy Thornton cares for me? If she wants Cameron, why shouldn't she have him?"

At this Emily Tweksbury flung her head back and regarded Raymond with flaming eyes.

"You—well!—just what are you? Can't you see? Could you possibly believe any girl would take Cameron if she had you to choose?"

At this Raymond laughed. He laughed with abandon, going the gamut of emotions like a scale. But presently he became quiet, and a rare tenderness overspread his face. He went over to Mrs. Tweksbury and bent to kiss her.

"I never knew before, Aunt Emily," he said, "just what a mother meant. I'm sorry, dear. Upon my word, I'm deadly sorry, but I'm made slow and cautious and mechanical—I'm afraid of making mistakes—and if I have lost because of my weakness, why, you and I must cling the closer."

"Oh! Ken. When you talk like that I feel that I must go and have it out with Nancy!"

"Aunt Emily, hands off!"

Raymond was suddenly stern, and Mrs. Tweksbury bowed before the tone.

But Raymond meant to make sure before he accepted defeat. He spurred himself to the test with the name of Emily Tweksbury on his lips. That name seemed to hold all his responsibilities and hopes—his long-ago past; the only claim upon the future except—— And in this Raymond was sincere. His own honest love for the girl who had entered his life so soon after his doubt of himself had had birth made him fear to put his feet upon the broad highway.

But he braced himself for effort and on a stormy, sleety January afternoon he telephoned to Nancy and asked her if she were to be free that evening.

She was. And—to his shame Raymond heard it gleefully—she had a "sniffy little cold" that made going out impossible.

"Are you afraid of sniffy colds?" asked Nancy, "they say they are catching!"

"I particularly like them," Raymond returned.

"We'll have a big fire in the sunken room and," here Nancy gurgled over the telephone, "we'll toast marshmallows."

Raymond presented himself as early as he dared and was told by the maid to go to the sunken room. Believing that Nancy was there awaiting him, he approached with a beaming countenance.

Cameron stood with his back to the roaring fire.

"Hello, Ken!" he blurted, cheerfully. "You look like a gargoyle."

"Thanks!" All the light and joy fled at the sight of the big fellow by the hearth. Dispiritedly, Raymond sat down and resigned himself to what he believed was the inevitable.

Cameron regarded him critically as he might have a puzzling case. Then, having made a diagnosis, he prescribed:

"Sorry to see me here, old chap?"

"Why in thunder should I be?" Raymond glared.

"No reason—but then reason isn't everything. Nancy's a bit off—I'd hate to have her confront that mug of yours, Ken, if I can soften it up any. I came to bring some medicine from Uncle David—he's worried about colds these days. Nancy told me you were coming, she went upstairs to take her dose in private—she told me to stay and give you the glad hand and explain. Somehow you don't look exactly appreciative."

"Sorry!" Raymond found himself relaxing. "Want me to kiss you?"

"Try it! I'd like to have a fling at you. What's up, anyway, Ken? See here, old man, you know there might be any one of twenty fellows here to-night—you ought to be on your knees thanking heaven that it's I—not one of the twenty."

"What the devil do you mean?" Raymond got up, tried to feel resentment but could not.

"Nothing, only I'm going and—well, Ken, don't be an ass. It don't pay."

Raymond tried to think of something to say, but before the right thing occurred he heard Cameron's cheerful whistle cut off by the closing of the heavy front door.

Then he sat down by the fire and did some thinking. It was the kind of concentrated thought that separates the chaff and wheat; foregoes the glitter of romance and reaches out for the guiding, unfailing light of reality.

How long he sat alone Raymond never realized. It seemed like years, then like a moment—but it brought him to Nancy as she stood at the top of the flight of steps leading to the warm, fire-lighted room while the fountain splashed cheerfully and a restless, curious little bird twittered in its cage.

Nancy wore the faintest of blue gowns; a cloudlike scarf fell from her shoulders; her eyes held the full confession of her love as they met the groping in Raymond's.

He opened his arms.

"My darling!" he said, "will you come?"

Slowly, radiantly, Nancy stepped down.

"It seems as if I'd always been coming," she was saying. "I—I don't want to hurry now that I—I see you."

"I—I think I've always been coming, too," Raymond would not take a step, "but I was walking in the dark."

"And I——" but Nancy did not finish her sentence—she had found her heart's desire.

"I'm not worthy," murmured Raymond, pressing the light hair with his lips.

"Neither am I. We'll grow worthy together. It's like finding a beautiful thing we both were seeking. It isn't you or I—alone—it is something outside us that we are going to make—ours."

Spiritually Raymond got upon his knees, humanly he pressed the girl close.

"It's—you—the Thing is—you" he whispered, and at that moment knew the last, definite difference between what he now felt and—all that had gone before.



CHAPTER XXI

"To suffer sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth that has to be learned in the fire."

It was all so exactly as it should be—the love affair of Nancy and Raymond—that it lacked excitement. There was a moment when Doris and David Martin looked into each other's eyes and sadly smiled; but that was past as it came.

"It's all right, Davey!"

"Of course, Doris, and Bud wasn't in it after all. It was our desire—not his. He seems to feel he ought to be cheered for whooping the thing on; making Raymond jealous, you know."

"Dear boy!"

"Thanks, Doris. He is something worth while."

Mrs. Tweksbury was so expansive in her happiness that she embarrassed Nancy. She fairly bounded over the fragrant garden of new love and scanned the wide pastures beyond.

"Ken, if I can see children in this old house, I'll thank God and depart in peace. Say that you will come here, boy. You know I'm always scuttling overseas. I won't be in the way—but it is the one desire of my shrivelled old heart."

"Aunt Emily, go slow and don't be ridiculous. The idea of your being in the way in your own house!"

"Ken, make Nancy love me. I know I'm gnarled and crusty, but I need what she has to give all the more because of that. I have no pride—I want that girl's love so—that I'd—I'd humble myself."

Raymond kissed her.

"Has she told you of her—her sister—yet?" Mrs. Tweksbury asked.

"Yes. Nancy says that until Joan, that's the name I believe, comes home she cannot leave Miss Fletcher. Nancy must not sacrifice herself."

Raymond was quickly assuming the charms of ownership.

"She always has been," snapped Mrs. Tweksbury, "an unconscious offering. Where is her gad-about sister?"

"I forget—out West somewhere, I believe."

"What is she doing?"

"The Lord knows. I got a very disagreeable impression of her. I didn't do much questioning—Nancy was on the defensive. She adores her sister."

"Bless the child! I have an unpleasant remembrance of the girl, too." Mrs. Tweksbury smiled grimly. "She was always a pert chit, and I believe she is like her disreputable father—you know about him, Ken?"

"Yes—something. Miss Fletcher mentioned him—she says she wants to have a talk later on. But what do I care, Aunt Emily?"

"I should rather like to know, myself." Mrs. Tweksbury sniffed scandal. "I never have been sure about him, but I know he was socially above reproach. If he personally went wrong it is deplorable, but, Ken, if he had his roots in good soil instead of mud, it isn't fatal."

"Bosh! Aunt Emily."

"Bosh! all you want to, boy. It's easy to bosh when you're on the safe side—but neither you nor I can afford to ignore the difference."

"Nancy speaks for herself, Aunt Emily."

"Yes, thank God, and redeems her father. Wait until you see the sister. She was a lovely, distracting imp—but with a queer twist. I shouldn't be surprised a bit if she needs a deal of explaining and excusing."

But when Nancy's wonderful news reached Joan in the tiny Chicago home it made her very tender and wistful.

"Think, Pat, of dear little Nan—going to be married. Married!"

Patricia, who shared all Joan's letters, lighted a cigarette and puffed for a moment, looking into the glowing grate, then she quoted eloquently:

"There was a little woman, So I've heard tell, Who went to market, Her eggs for to sell!"

Joan stared.

"My lamb, for this cause came Nancy and her kind into the world."

"I don't understand, Pat." Joan's eyes were shining and misty.

"Well, what on earth would you do with Nancy if you didn't marry her off? If she were homely she'd have to fill in chinks in other people's lives, but with her nice little basket of eggs, good looks, money, not too much wit, and a desire to please, she just naturally is put up for sale and off she goes!"

"Pat, you are vulgar! Nancy is the finest, sweetest of girls. She would only marry for love."

"Sure thing, my lamb. And she could make love out of—anything."

Joan was thinking of Nancy's capacity for making truth.

"Dear, little, sweet Nan," she whispered.

"Just the right stuff out of which to make successful marriages. Who is the collector, Joan?"

"Pat, you make me angry!" Joan really was hurt.

"She doesn't tell me his name. She says——" here Joan referred to the letter; "'I am going to try and keep him until you come and see him. Joan, he is worth a trip from Chicago.'"

"You are—going?" asked Patricia.

"Pat—I am. Only for a visit, but suddenly I find myself crazy hungry for them all.

"I'll be back in a couple of weeks; I'll only lose three lessons and surely, Pat, you'll forgive me if I desert you for that one glimpse of my darling Nan and her man?"

"I suppose so. But, Joan, don't stay long. I know how the reformed drunkard feels when he's left to his lonesome. He doubts his reformation."

"Pat!" Joan felt the tug of responsibility.

The next night Patricia came home with a bedraggled little dog in her arms.

"Where did you find that, Pat?" Joan paused in her task of getting dinner and fondled the absurd creature.

"Oh! he was browsing along like a lost soul, sniffing to find—not a scent, I wager he never had one of his own, but a possible one. Out of all the mob, Joan, he chose me! He came up, nosed around my feet, and then whined delightedly—the old fraud! I picked him up and looked in his eyes—I know the look, Joan. He might be my never-had-brother, there is a family resemblance."

"Pat, how silly."

"No joking, lamb. I couldn't ignore the appeal—besides, he'll keep me straight while you are away."

"Pat—come with me!" Joan bent over the dog, who already showed his preference for Patricia.

"I cannot, Joan. The trade is growing—I am planning an exhibition. I'm ashamed to say it, but the business is getting into my gray matter. No—go to your duty, lamb—the pup and I will get acquainted and make up for lost time."

And while Joan made preparations to go to New York, and while Doris and Nancy planned to make her visit a success, something occurred that changed all their lives. It was the epidemic of influenza. The shrouded and menacing Thing approached like the plague that it was to prove itself. It was no discerner of people; its area was limitless, it harvested whence it would and, while it was named, it was not understood.

David Martin ordered Doris and Nancy out of town at once.

"You may not escape," he said, "but your best chance is in the open. Besides, you'll leave us freer here."

"But Joan—David!"

"Joan be hanged! Can't she get to Ridge House?"

"Of course. But I wanted to have her here to—to justify herself. Emily Tweksbury is trying to make a tragedy of Joan. I'm afraid Ken suspects her—his awful silences are insulting—I wanted to—to show her off."

"Nonsense, Doris! But this is no time for squibbling. Scoot!"

"But—you, David!"

"I? Oh! I'm all right. Remember I have Bud. Why, the chap is pulling up his sleeves and baring his breast to the foe. I'm going to stand close by him."

Martin's eyes shone.

"David, if anything should happen to you——" Doris paused.

"I'll run down now and then," Martin took the thin, delicate hands in his. "I'll come—when I feel tired."

"You promise, David?"

"I—swear it."

So Doris took Nancy away. A tearful, woe-begone Nancy who clung to Raymond with the tenacity of a love that faces a desperate situation.

"Beloved," whispered Raymond, "I'm going to get Aunt Emily out of the danger zone and then I'll come to you. If this Joan of yours has arrived—we'll be married, you and I, at once. We don't care for the society fizz. This epidemic makes you think about—taking joy while you can."

"Yes, Ken—if—if Joan will stay with Aunt Dorrie."

"Well, by heaven! She'll have to stay. I'm not going to let them cheat me!"

To this Nancy gave a look that thrilled Raymond as he had never been thrilled before—it was supreme surrender.

And presently in the stricken city gaiety and laughter seemed to die away in the black, swooping shadow.

"When you use up all you know," Clive Cameron said one night to David, "you still keep hunting about for something else, don't you?"

Martin nodded. Both men were worn and haggard. They were fighting in the front ranks with the men of their profession—fighting an unknown foe, but bravely gaining confidence.

"The death rate is lower to-day, Bud. Hang to that!"

"I do, Uncle Dave. If it still goes down, will you take a vacation?"

"You are willing to go it alone, boy?"

"Yes!" grimly. "I know I must."

The two men relaxed and smoked peacefully, their feet stretched out to the fire. Their long day warranted this pause. They were strangely alike; strangely unlike. Occasionally their eyes met and then their lips smiled.

They were friends. The blood tie was incidental.

"You ought to be married, Clive."

"Why, especially?"

"A man should; a doctor especially. A wife and children are better to come home to than a pipe—and a housekeeper."

"You managed to buck along, Uncle Dave."

"Yes—buck along! I couldn't make up my mind to——"

"I understand, Uncle Dave. Miss Fletcher is great stuff—she makes other women look cheap."

"Bud, some women are like that."

"I suppose so."

Both men shook the ashes from their pipes—there was a night's work ahead.

Martin stared at the young face opposite. It was a strong, kind face—a face waiting for the high waves to strike it. Martin seemed never to have known the boy, really, before.

"Bud, suppose you never find your woman?" he asked, huskily.

"All right, then I'll peg along with that much lacking. Oh! I know what you are thinking of, Uncle Dave. I've been through it—and turned it down! Ever since I can remember I've kept a grip on myself by remembering you!"

"Good God, boy!" Martin choked; "I'm a poor model. At the best I've been—neutral."

"Like hell you have!" irreverently ejaculated Cameron, pleasantly. "Why, Uncle Dave, you've got muscle all over you from fighting the demon in you, but you have no ugly scars. We can look each other in the eyes as we couldn't—if there were scars. It's all right, Uncle Dave. We'll get Mother here before long and have a bully time."

Martin could not speak for a moment; he was looking ahead to the time when he'd have only this boy and his mother!

"Well, what's up, Uncle Dave?"

"Bud, have you suspected anything about Miss Fletcher? Her health, I mean?"

"Yes. I've studied about her, too."

"And kept quiet, eh?"

"Sure! But, Uncle Davie, if we—" Martin blessed him for that "we"—"if we could get her outside of herself, it would do a lot for her. I've a hunch that you have let her get on the shelf. I wouldn't if I were you! I know it may be necessary to keep her to rules, but she thinks too much about the rules; they cramp her. When Nancy marries—what then?"

"The Lord knows!"

"Where's that other girl—Joan?"

Martin's face hardened.

"Living her life. Her life," he said.

"Anything—dirty about it?" Cameron asked.

"No. So far as I can find out, she's just taking what she calls her own."

"Well, why shouldn't she, Uncle Dave? By all that's holy why shouldn't a woman have her own as well as a fellow? Just because she was born to petticoats doesn't mean that she's born to all the jobs men don't want."

"There are certain things the world exacts of a woman, Bud."

"What, for instance, Uncle Dave?"

Martin considered. He was a just man, but he was prejudiced.

"Self-sacrifice, for one thing!"

"Who says so? Who benefits most by her self-sacrifice?" Cameron flushed as he rambled on. "We may split on this rock, Uncle," he blurted. "Think of my mother—I sort of resent it, because I am a man, that we idealize virtues and plaster them on women when we know jolly well, if we lathered them on ourselves, we'd cave in under them. It's up to the woman! That's what I say. Let her select her own little virtues and see to it that she squares it with her soul and then men—well, men keep to the right and keep moving!"

Having flared forth, Cameron laughed at his own fireworks.

"Joan is selfish, Nancy quite the reverse." Martin's brows drew together. "Don't be an ass, Bud!"

"What's this Joan doing?"

"Thinking she's gifted," snapped Martin.

"How is she to find out if she doesn't try? Is Miss Fletcher paying for the racket?"

"No. That's the rub. The girl's paying for it herself. Smudging herself doing it, too. A woman can't escape the smudge."

"Oh! well"—Cameron was tiring of it all—"it's when the smudge sticks that counts. If it is only skin deep, it doesn't matter."

"But—a woman, Bud—well, skin matters in a woman."

"Who says so? Oh! chuck it, Uncle Dave. Which shall it be—bed for an hour or a rarebit at Tumbles and then—on to the fight?"

"What time is it?"

"Eleven-thirty."

"Bud, let us have another look at our salvage before we choose; if we find them sleeping, we'll take the rarebit as a recompense for a night's sleep."

And together they went out into the night. Two tired men who had done a stiff day's work—but felt that they must make sure before they sought rest for themselves.

* * * * *

And Joan and Patricia faced the epidemic as so many of the young did—nothing really could happen to them, they believed—and Chicago was not paying so heavy a toll.

"We'll take a little extra care with food and sleep and wet feet," Joan cautioned, "and I'll put off my visit, Pat, for awhile."

"And, Joan," Patricia said, laughingly, "keep your mouth shut in the street!"

The four little rooms were sunshiny and warm; Joan sang hour by hour; worked at her music and "made the home," while Patricia kept to her rigid hours and designed marvellous things in which other women revelled.

Since Nancy had gone South and her beloved was absent, Joan felt that her duty was to Patricia. Without being able to classify her feeling she clung to Patricia with a nameless anxiety.

She taught the little dog to fetch Patricia's slippers to the living-room fire; she always had dinner ready when, tired and frail, Patricia appeared with that glad light in her eyes.

"You act as if I, not you, were going away, my lamb," Patricia often said; "but you are a blessing! And Cuff"—she leaned down and gathered the small, quivering dog in her arms—"and Cuff runs you a close second."

Cuff wagged his stubby tail excitedly. He was a proud creature, a proof of what could be done with a bad job, and he had all the snobbishness that is acquired, not bred in the bone. He slept on the foot of Patricia's bed and forgot back alleys. He selected tidbits with the air of one who knew not garbage cans, but he redeemed all shortcomings by his faithful love to her who had rescued him. The melting brown eyes found their highest joy in Patricia's approval, and a harsh word from her brought his diminutive tail between his legs for an hour.

It was April when Patricia came up the stairs, one night, laggingly. Cuff was on the landing with his token of devotion. The girl picked him up, kissed his smooth body and went on, more slowly. Joan had the table set for the dainty dinner by the broad western window. She turned when Patricia entered.

"What's the matter, Pat?" she asked.

"Nothing, only Cuff is growing heavy."

"Are you tired?"

"Not a bit. What a wonder you are, Joan! That table is a dream with those daffodils in the green bowl. Old Syl was right—you put the punch in home!"

"There's chicken to-night, Pat. I plunged on the strength of what my Professor said to-day."

There were times when Joan wondered if Patricia was not insisting upon home more for her sake than her own.

"What did she say, Joan?"

"That next winter I might—sing!"

"Bully! But you sing now—like several kinds of seraphs. Warble while I make ready for dinner, Joan."

So Joan sang as she flitted from kitchen to dining room.

"I'll take the high road and you take the low road And I'll get to Scotland before you——"

she rippled, and Patricia joined in:

"I'll get to Scotland before you!"

Then she said, from the bedroom beyond:

"I know what it is in your singing that gets us, Joan. It's the whole lot more than words can express."

"Of course! That's high art, Pat! Come on, dearie-thing, you must carve."

"Now, Scotland"—Patricia issued forth in a lovely gown and Joan dropped her long apron and appeared a happy reflection of Patricia's magnificence—"Scotland stands for everything your soul wants when you sing. Not a place—but—everything."

"Yes. That's what I feel," Joan replied, quite seriously.

Patricia did not eat much that evening, but she gave the impression that she was doing so.

The girls always disposed of the dishes, after dinner, in a wizard-like manner. They disappeared until morning—and no questions were asked!

Then, when the meal was over this night, Patricia flung herself on the couch, clasped Cuff in her arms, and asked Joan to sing her to sleep.

"You are tired, Pat. Was it a hard day?"

Joan came wistfully to the couch.

"No, not hard, only bracing. They're going to raise me in the summer, Joan. We'll be fat and lazy next winter—and just think: the summer in The Gap lies between!" For that was what Joan's deferred visit had resolved itself into.

"Pat, your cheeks are—red!"

"Joan, don't be silly. I touched them up. I never could see the difference between rouge and dyes and powder and false teeth! They're all aimed at the same thing—and it isn't mastication, either. It's how you handle the aids to beauty."

"Dear, funny, pretty old Pat!"

"Joan, go and sing!"

That night Cuff was dreaming the old haunting dream about waking up in the gutter when something startled him. It was a very soft call.

"Come up here, Cuff, I want you—close!"

Cuff needed no second invitation! But the closer he got the more nervous he became.

"Cuff, look at me!"

Cuff looked.

"Cuff—once—you wouldn't have looked!"

Cuff denied this by a vigorous whack of his stumpy tail.

There were a few minutes more during which Patricia said some very remarkable things about being glad that children and dogs could look at her; and that Joan felt happy with her, and that love had something to say for itself if you didn't wrong it, and then Cuff voluntarily jumped from the bed and scampered into Joan's room. Joan was sleeping and Cuff had to tug rather savagely at her sleeve before he attracted her attention. But when Joan was awake every sense was alert.

"What's the matter?" she asked, but while she was speaking she was on her way to Patricia's room.

Patricia was tossing about and laughing gently; she was insisting that she was going up the Climbing Way and that the travelling was hard and the weather hot! For a moment Joan stood still. All her strength deserted her, but in that instant she knew the worst, as people do at times—when the end is near!

It was only three days for Patricia and she never realized the truth for herself. A nurse, a weary but faithful doctor, and Joan kept her company on the Climbing Way which got easier toward the top.

"You take the high road and I'll take the low road But I'll get to Scotland before you——"

It was Patricia who sang, not Joan, and then she laughed gaily.

"I bet I will beat you out, Joan—but it wasn't—Scotland, you know it—was—home!"

Just before the top was reached Patricia grew quiet and grave. She clung to Joan with one hand and patted Cuff with the other.

"I think," she whispered, "that when dogs and little children can look you in the eye, God can!"

She did not speak much after that—but she sang in fragments, hummed when very tired, and murmured—"Nice little old Joan and Cuff," just before she reached—home!

It was all so crushingly sudden that Joan was dazed and could not feel at all. Fortunately, the nurse arranged to stay with her for a week, and the doctor acted, through all his burdened days, as if an extra load was really a comfort to him. He asked Joan what steps he should take about Patricia, and Joan stared at him.

"You see, Pat just belonged to me," she explained; "and—and well! must I decide anything just now?"

"I think we must—about the body—you know!" The doctor felt his heart beat quicker as he gazed into the wide, tearless eyes.

"The—the body? Oh! I see what you mean. I—I was going to take Pat home next summer; this summer—but——"

"Perhaps we can arrange to have the body remain here in Chicago until you make plans."

"Oh! if you only could." Joan looked her gratitude.

And so Patricia Leigh was laid to rest in the vault of strangers until the girl who had loved her could realize the thing that had overtaken her.

In the lonely rooms the empty stillness acted like a drug upon Joan. She mechanically performed the small services she used to perform so gladly for Patricia. She held Cuff in her arms as she repeated:

"It cannot be, Cuff, dear, it cannot! Such a terrible thing couldn't happen—not without warning. She will come back; she will, Cuff—please don't look so sad!"

It was three weeks after Patricia went that Cuff met Joan as she entered the room—with Patricia's slippers which he had found where Joan had hidden them! The sight of the pathetic little figure touched something in Joan and it sprang to hurting, suffering life.

For hours the girl wept in the dark rooms. She begged for death; anything to dull forever the pain that she could not understand. But the grief saved her and she began to think for herself, since no one was there to think for her. The city was full of sickness and death. Those who could, must do for themselves. Joan had not written home; she wondered what she had done in all the ages since Pat went.

All Patricia's small affairs were in order. Her money and Joan's were banked under both names, and the dreary little home was but an empty shell.

"I've failed—utterly," the girl sobbed over Cuff in her arms; "I told Aunt Dorrie when I found that out—I would go to her."

So Joan sold the furniture and sublet the rooms; she paid her small debts and promised her music teacher that she would continue her work in New York. Then she turned wearily, aimlessly—homeward, with Cuff in her arms.



CHAPTER XXII

"Love, hope, fear, faith—these make humanity!"

The trip to New York was always marked in later years, to Joan, by the most trivial occurrences.

The passing to and fro to the baggage car where Cuff, a crumpled and quivering mass, seemed to ask her what it all meant; the sense of eagerness to get to The Gap before it was too late; the determination not to frighten any one she meant to telegraph from New York; she would leave her trunks in the station and take a bag to a little hotel where she and Pat had stayed the night before they fled from New York. So far, all was clear.

So she planned; forgot, and planned again. Between these wanderings and the care of Cuff there were long hours of forgetfulness and a sound of rushing water—or was it the train plunging through the dark?

Once in New York, with Cuff trotting behind, Joan seemed to gather strength—but not clear vision. She went to the small hotel and secured a room. She meant to telegraph and buy her ticket South—but instead she fed Cuff, took a little food herself, and fell asleep. It was late when she awakened to a realization of acute suffering that seemed confused and spasmodic. It was like being partially conscious. She was frightened and tried to fix upon some direct and immediate means of securing help for herself. She did not want to call assistance from the office, so she got up and dressed and half staggered downstairs. It needed all her effort to hold to one thought long enough to accomplish anything.

First there was Cuff. She must get Cuff, quiet his nervousness, and feed him. Then with that in mind she took food herself—as much as she could swallow. It was while she was forcing herself to this task that Doctor Martin came, like an actual presence, to her consciousness.

Why had she not thought of him before?

"Uncle Davey!" she murmured and her eyes filled with tears. Of course! She would take a cab to Doctor Martin's office and then everything would be solved. He would take care of her; send word to The Gap; protect Aunt Doris and Nancy from shock. She began to laugh quietly, tremblingly—she was safe at last. Safe!

It was after ten o'clock when she paid her taxi driver in front of Martin's office and dismissed him. Gathering Cuff in one aching arm and clutching her bag she slowly, painfully mounted the steps without noticing the sign bearing a new name.

If anything were needed to prove how detached Joan had been for the past year or two it was this ignorance concerning the arrangement between Martin and his nephew. Had she not been on the border of delirium she would have recalled certain things which would have guided her; as it was she felt, dazedly, for the bell, pressed the button, and to the maid who responded she faintly said:

"I—I want the doctor." She looked, indeed, as if this were shockingly true.

"It's past office hours," stammered the girl, a little scared; "but perhaps if you come in——"

Joan staggered in and, seeing a door open at the end of the hall, reached it, entered, and sank down in a chair with the astonished eyes of Clive Cameron upon her!

He was ready for his rounds—was on the way, then, to his hospital; it was Martin's pet institution and Cameron's first care in the morning.

"I'm—tired," Joan informed him. "Please take care of—Cuff!"

And then everything went black and quiet.

Never in all his life had Cameron had anything so surprising happen to him. He looked at the girl, whom he managed to carry to the couch; he turned to the dog whose faithful eyes rather steadied him, then he applied all the remedies that one does at such times. Eventually Joan revived, but she stared vacantly at the face above her and did not attempt to speak.

Presently Cameron called in his nurse.

"I think it is brain fever," he explained to the cool, capable woman who asked naturally:

"Who is she?"

"The Lord knows."

"Where did she come from? Where does she belong?"

"The Lord knows. She just came in with the dog and then dropped after asking me to care for—for Cuff—yes, that's what she called him—then she went off."

"It's a duck of a dog," the nurse remarked as one does make inane remarks at a critical time. Then:

"Have you looked in her bag?"

"Certainly not!"

"We had better." And they did.

There was a trunk key, seventy-five dollars, and a letter signed "Syl," and frivolously dilating upon a man named John and loads of love to Miss Lamb!

"Well!" said the nurse, "and as one might expect, no heading, date, or any sensible clue—and the envelope missing. We must label this patient, I suppose, as Miss Lamb. The articles of clothing are unmarked. Queer all around!"

"We must get her into the hospital at once," Cameron replied. The doctor in him was getting into action.

"Can we manage her in my car?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Then get busy. Call her Miss Lamb when you have to answer questions. We can find out about her later. Where's that dog?"

Cuff was making himself invisible. He was under the couch.

"Have him fed and taken care of, Miss Brown—tell the maid."

Joan leaned against Cameron on the way to the hospital while Miss Brown kept a finger on her pulse. The girl's body acted mechanically, but the brain was clogged.

Day by day in the white, quiet hospital room the battle for her life went on; day by day outside effort was made to trace her and find her friends.

"You wise-looking brute," Cameron often thought as he regarded Cuff at the day's end; "why can't you tell what you know?"

But Cuff simply wagged his stump and slunk off. Life was becoming too puzzling for him.

Cameron studied advertisements and certain columns in the papers, but no one seemed to have missed the pretty young creature in the Martin Sanatorium.

"It's the very devil of a case!" Cameron declared, and set about erecting some sort of foundation upon which "Miss Lamb" might repose without causing too much unhealthy curiosity.

Eventually, Joan was simply a bad case of Doctor Cameron's. One from out of town. Her folks trusted him, but were too distant to visit the girl.

Cameron considered telegraphing for Martin, who was at The Gap, but he knew that sooner or later he must rely upon himself alone, and so he began with "Miss Lamb."

The days and weeks dragged on. There were ups and downs, hopes and discouragements, but through them all Joan looked dazedly at Cameron, and if she ever showed intelligence it was when he spoke to her in a perfectly new set of tones that were being incorporated into his voice and which seemed to disturb her. To all questions, as to names, the girl in the dim room returned a dull stare and silence, but there were times when she deliriously rambled intimate confidences. When these times occurred, Cameron, if he chanced to be present, ordered the nurse from the room and listened alone. He was relieved to hear that the patient rarely spoke when he was not with her.

Joan dwelt upon her failure—her longing to go to Pat.

These items Cameron recorded in a small red book, for his memory was none too good and he was busy to a dangerous degree.

Then, again, the sick girl depicted the night of the storm—the shock and consequent flight.

"But," she pleaded piteously, holding the strong hand that anchored her to life, "he won! he won, and it is always going to be all right. Oh! if he could only know!"

There would be a pause always ending in: "I want Pat."

"Where is—Pat?" Cameron ventured.

"Home!" And then, weakly, but with a wrenching pathos, Joan sang—"I'll get to—Scotland—no! home—before you!"

"Come, come, now!" Cameron pressed the thin form down. "You know you've got to live—for Pat."

"Yes—for Pat." And then Joan would sleep.

It was a day in late May that Cameron noticed a change in his case. She was weaker, but steadier. She seemed to connect him with something in the recent past, and that encouraged him. All her previous conscious moments had been like detached flashes.

"What was it you said I must live for?" she asked Cameron. "I've forgotten."

"For everything," he replied, throwing off his coat and gripping the promising moment. "You're not the kind to slink out. Besides, you've got to tell me about your folks. Give them a chance to prove themselves and set things straight." Cameron watched the struggle on the thin face. "And there is—Pat!" he added.

Joan looked amazed and then quivered.

"Yes, Pat, of course!"

There was a long pause, the consciousness was seeking something to which it might cling. Something forever eluding it.

A day or two later Cameron brought the dog into the sick room. Joan turned as she heard steps.

"Cuff!" she cried and then, as the dog leaped on to her, she sobbed and murmured over and over: "Pat's little Cuff; Pat's little Cuff."

Her way on ahead was safer after that—safer but more secretive.

As Joan got control of her thoughts she became more silent and watchful. She questioned the nurse and found out where she was and how long she had been there; she smiled with her old touch of humour when she was called Miss Lamb but gave thanks that she had a name not her own!

She regarded Cameron with deep gratitude, but drove him to a corner by insisting that he tell her how much she owed him.

Cameron, having her purse under lock and key, at home, told her she owed the hospital fifty dollars.

At that Joan laughed, and the sound gave Cameron more hope than he had known for some time, but it seemed to mark, also, Joan's complete self-control.

Often she lay for hours with closed eyes and wondered with a bit of self-pity why she had not been discovered? Had she so completely dropped from the lives of those she loved that they had forgotten her? She did not know, for some time to come, of the letters to her that were returned to The Gap! She was never to know, fully, the anguish that Doris Fletcher was enduring in her mistaken determination not to hamper the girl who was testing her strength.

While David Martin rated her for ingratitude and carelessness; while Nancy's face set in resentment and disapproval, Doris smiled and insisted that she would not judge until Joan explained.

"Of course," she added, "if anything were really wrong Joan or Patricia would write. They are probably away on business—and at the worst they will soon let me know when to expect them. Joan was always a poor correspondent."

"Would you like to have me go to Chicago?" Martin asked.

"David, would you go if—it were your boy?" Doris hung on his answer.

"I jolly well wouldn't! I'd let the scamp learn the whole lesson."

"Very well, then I do not want you to go to Chicago!"

Joan, slowly recovering, could hardly have explained to herself why she was so secretive, but more and more she determined not to go to The Gap and open her heart to Doris until she was able to command the situation. Since she had, for some reason, dropped from their lives, she would wait. Meanwhile, her heart ached with the pity of it all.

She wondered how the name of Lamb had ever been attached to her, and finally she decided to ask Cameron about it.

It was Cameron's custom, now, to delay his call upon Joan until late afternoon. When he was on his way to dinner he took a half hour or more to sit beside her bed and indulge in various emotions.

So long as Joan had been a desperate case she had no individuality at all, except scientifically.

She was bathed, and eventually her hair was cut, not shaved—the nurse put in a plea at the cutting point—and she was fed and made to sleep; but gradually, as she emerged from the shadowy boundary, she assumed different proportions.

Cameron concluded that her reticence, now her brain was growing clearer, came from a determined effort to cover her tracks and perhaps those of a man—unworthy, undoubtedly, and Cameron believed this man to be the "Pat" to whom his patient had so frantically referred in her raving.

There had evidently been a strenuous scene in which Pat had figured and through which he and the girl had emerged rather deplorably.

Cameron also arrived at the conclusion that the young woman in his care must be made to take a keener interest in life than she seemed to be taking, or her recovery would be slower than it ought to be, according to physical indications. The growing silence worried him; he wished that he could gain her confidence, not in order to gratify curiosity, but to enable him to be of real service.

One afternoon he called at the hospital reinforced with a box of roses.

The flowers had an immediate effect upon Joan. She buried her face in them and closed her eyes, and then Cameron saw large, slow tears escaping the close-shut lids. He welcomed these. Presently Joan asked:

"How is—is—Cuff?"

"Oh! he's ripping," Cameron replied; "after seeing you he seemed to size up the situation and come to terms."

"How—how did you happen to know his name?" This had been a burning curiosity for the past week.

"You happened to mention it when you keeled over in my office. Cuff was apparently your one responsibility. We found your name in a letter—Miss Lamb."

The roses hid the quivering face while a new and hurting question for the first time entered in. Then:

"Did—did I go to your office? I thought I—was brought here from——"

"You were brought here, all right," Cameron felt his way slowly along the opening path; "Miss Brown and I had rather a vigorous trip with you—in my automobile."

"Cuff belonged to—to Pat!" Joan remarked, irrelevantly. She was forcing her thought back to the blank period lying between the hotel and the hospital. Gradually it brightened and a smothered sob found place in the roses.

"So that is why they have left me alone!" Joan reflected; "but oh! how frightened they must be!"

"I rather imagine Pat must be fairly well used up wondering about you," Cameron was saying as if the whole matter were an everyday affair, but rather annoying; "queer things happen in a big city. We've done our best to locate your friends; I think some of the officials I have consulted have their doubts as to my mental condition. I kept under cover as well as I could until you were well enough to act for yourself."

"Thank you—oh! thank you." This very faintly and brokenly.

"You see, you are one of the cases that prove that an impossibility is—possible. Truth-stronger-than-fiction idea. But if you would like me to communicate with Pat, I'll be glad to help you."

"No—I will wait now." Joan drew her lips close.

Cameron controlled his features while he listened, but he never referred to Pat again.

"I've sometimes thought," Cameron spoke calmly, "that you might have been looking for my uncle, Doctor Martin, when you stumbled into his old office. I could not flatter myself that you were bent upon obtaining my services."

At this Joan astonished Cameron almost as much as if she had sat up in her coffin.

She rose, as though propelled by a spring, she stared at him and then, as slowly, sank back, still holding him with her eyes that seemed preternaturally large.

"Oh! come now!" Cameron exclaimed. "What's up?" He took her hand and bent over her and to his amaze discovered that she was laughing! He touched the bell. Things were bewildering him—Miss Brown always managed trying situations by reducing them to normal. She responded at once; cool, serene, and capable.

"Nerves?" she asked. And then took command. She raised Joan and settled the pillows into new lines; she removed the roses almost sternly—she disliked the nuisance of flowers in a sick room.

"There, now!" she whispered to Joan, "take this drink and go to sleep like a good girl."

In the face of this sound common sense laughing was out of the question. Joan pretended sleep rather than risk another: "There, now!"

But her recovery was rapid after that day. Like a veil withdrawn she reflected upon the past as if it were, not a story that was told, but a preface to the real story that her life must be.

The folly, the irresponsibility, no longer dismayed her, but gave her reasons and arguments.

She wanted to live at last! She wanted to go home and separate herself forever from the cheap, theatrical thing she had believed was freedom! She saw the folly of it all; she seemed an old woman regarding the dangerous passage of a younger one.

She realized her own selfishness in her demand for self-expression. What had she expressed while others fixed their faithful eyes on duty?

Nancy shone high and clear in those dull hospital days. Nancy who demanded so little, but who trod, with divine patience, the truer course.

"Well, Nan shall have her own!" Joan thought, and gripped her thin hands under the bedclothes. "I'll strive for Nan as I never have for myself."

Out of the debris of the feverish past Joan held alone to Patricia. Strange, it seemed to her, that the dead girl should have grown to such importance, but so it was. Patricia was the real, the sacred thing, and she planned the home-bringing of the dear body and the placing of it on the hillside in The Gap.

And through the convalescing days Cameron had his place, like a fixed star.

Often worn by the day's silent remorse and earnest promise as to the future, Joan looked to that hour when Cameron, calm, serious but cheerful, sat by her bedside—a strong link between the folly of the past and the hope of the times on ahead.

Vaguely she recalled the blurred weeks of fever and pain, and always his quiet voice and cool touch held part.

"And to think," Joan could but smile, "that he does not know me—but I know who he is just as I knew about——" She could not name Raymond yet—she could only think kindly of him when she held to the days before that last, tragic night.

And Cameron, meanwhile, was drawing wrong conclusions. Not that they changed his personal attitude toward the girl whose life he had helped save. To him she was a human creature whose faith in her future must be restored as her body was in the process of being. Cameron believed in stepping-stones and was utterly opposed to waste of any kind.

"She's paid her debt and his, too, I wager," Cameron often muttered; "that's the devil of it all, and she'll go on and perhaps down—if she doesn't get a start up. If I could only get hold of her folks—it would help!"

But Joan held him at bay when he ventured on that line.

"When I am quite well," she said with gentle dignity, "I am going home and do my own explaining."

"Are you considering—them?" Cameron frowned at her.

"I am—as I never have before!"

To this silence was the only reply.

Presently Joan made her first big stride toward complete recovery. She forsook her bed during the day and, in pink gown and dainty cap—procured by Miss Brown—she passed from a "case" to an individual.

The twilight hour now became something of a function and Cameron dropped his professional manner with his outdoor trappings and appeared, often, as a tired but very humanly interesting young man.

He talked of safe, ordinary things, he brought books and flowers, and while Miss Brown kept a rigid appearance, she inwardly sniffed—or the equivalent.

And then came the Sunday before Joan was to leave the hospital. It happened to be Easter, and a woman was singing in the little chapel down the hall. The room doors were open and the sweet words and melody floated in to the silent listeners—Joan pictured them as she sat and felt her tears roll down her cheeks.

"Some—are going out!" she thought, "and others, like me, must go on. And here we all are with walls between, but our doors open to:

"He weaves the shining garments Unceasingly and still Along the quiet waters In niches of the hills."

The words seemed to paint, in the narrow room, the dim Gap. The sound of the river was in Joan's ears and she knew that the niches of the safe hills where her loved ones waited, were full of the spring blossoms.

No leaf that dawns to petal, But hints the Angel-plan.

Joan looked up and saw Cameron at the doorway. He almost filled it, and his eyes grew troubled as he noted the thin, white, tear-wet face.

"Shall I close the door?" he asked.

"No. Please do not. I like to think that all the others, down the corridor, and I are together—listening, growing better!"

"Oh! I see." Cameron tossed aside his coat and sat down.

"I—I don't think you do," Joan smiled at him; "I think I puzzle you terribly, but some day I am going to explain everything. All my life I have been, as I am now, in a narrow little room—peeping out and never touching others any more than I am touching"—she pointed to the right and left—"my neighbours, here. But we were all listening to much the same thing then as now.

"I am going"—here Joan dashed her tears off—"I am going somehow to pull the walls down and know really!"

"Bully!" Cameron had a peculiar feeling in his throat. Then added: "I cut something out of a paper the other day that seemed to me to hold all the philosophy necessary for this tug-of-war we call life. Here it is!"

"Read it, please," Joan dropped her eyes.

"A shipwrecked sailor, buried here, bids you set sail. Full many a gallant bark, when he was lost, weathered the gale."

"Isn't that good, gripping stuff? I've caught the sense of it, and when I get to thinking—well, of such as lie in many of these little rooms, I'm glad—you're—setting sail!"

"Thank you, Doctor Cameron. I am setting sail! I thought I was before—I see the difference now. And to-morrow——"

"And to-morrow—where are you going—to-morrow?"

Cameron was ill at ease.

"To a little hotel—I will give you the address in the morning. It is from there that I will set sail."



CHAPTER XXIII

"No one can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself."

David Martin came into the living room of Ridge House bringing, as it seemed, the Spring with him. He left the door open and sat down. He was in rough clothes; he was brown and rugged. He was building, with his own hands, much of the cabin at Blowing Rock. He had never been more content in his life. He often paused, as he was now doing, and thought of it.

The hard winter's work was over and Martin felt the spring in his blood as he had not felt it in many a year.

Things were going to suit him—and they had had a way of eluding him in the past. Perhaps, he thought, because he had always wanted them just his way.

Somewhere, above stairs, Doris was singing, and Nancy from another part of the house was calling out little joyous remarks.

"Two telegrams in one day, Aunt Doris. Such riches!"

Doris paused in her song long enough to reply:

"Joan may come any day, Nan, dear. It is so like her to act, once she decides."

Martin, sitting by the hearth, reflected upon the injustice of Prodigal Sons and Daughters—but he smiled.

"They don't deserve it—but it's damnably true that they get it," he mused, irrelevantly.

"Joan's room is a dream, Nan, come and see it!" called Doris, and Nancy could be heard running and laughing to inspect the Prodigal's quarters.

"It looks divine!" she ejaculated. "Push that pink dogwood back a little, Aunt Dorrie—make it like a frame around the mirror for the dear's face."

"How's that, Nan?"

"Exactly—right. Aunt Dorrie?"

"Yes, my dear girl."

"I have the dearest plan—I feel that Ken would love it, but I hate to be the one to propose it."

From his armchair Martin smiled more broadly.

"Perhaps I can do it for you, Nan." Doris spoke abstractedly—she was, apparently, giving more thought to the decorations for the returning wanderer than to the plans of the good child who had remained at her post.

"Well, Aunt Doris, I don't want to wait until next winter to be married. Ken writes that he will have Mrs. Tweksbury safely settled in New York by the first of June——" Emily Tweksbury had fled the influenza and gone to Bermuda only to fall victim to pneumonia. Kenneth Raymond had been summoned, to what was supposed to be her death-bed, but which she indignantly refused to accept as such.

"When women are as old as I, Ken," she had whispered as he bent over her, "they consign them to death-beds too easily. Give me a month, boy, and I'll go back with you."

Kenneth had given her a month, then two weeks extra; he was bringing her back now—a frail old woman, but one in whose heart the determination to live was yet strong.

"But, darling, we'd have to give up the beautiful wedding—Mrs. Tweksbury could never stand the excitement now, or even this summer."

Doris's voice was more suggestive of attention as she now spoke. Martin waited.

"I know, Aunt Dorrie, but I am sure she would rather have me and Ken married than come to our wedding. Listen, duckie! Suppose, after Joan comes, we plan the dearest little service in the Chapel—I'm sure we could snatch Father Noble as he flits by. There would be you and Uncle David and Joan, and perhaps Clive could wrench himself away, and Mary and Uncle Jed—and," a tender pause, "and—Ken and me! We could make the Chapel beautiful with flowers from The Gap—our flowers—and then I could help Ken with Mrs. Tweksbury—for you, Aunt Dorrie, will have Joan."

Martin blinked his eyes. He never admitted a mistiness to the extent of wiping them. He listened for Doris's next words.

"Childie, it sounds enticing and just like you. I will talk it over with Uncle David."

The voices upstairs fell into a silence and Martin got up and paced the room.

A few minutes later Doris came down the stairs and, singing softly, entered the living room.

There was welcome in her eyes; the languor and helpless expression had faded from her face.

"Davey," she said, "I felt the draught—you have left the door open—I knew you were here.

"Oh! Davey, to-day the twenty-year limit seems quite the possible thing. My dear, my dear, Joan is coming home!"

Martin met Doris midway of the big room. He was startled at the change in her.

"I heard that a telegram had come. It's great news, Doris."

"Queer, isn't it, Davey, how one can brace and bear a good deal while there is the necessity, and then realize the strain only when the need is past? Joan says only 'coming home,' but I know as surely as I ever knew anything that it has been for the best and she is coming gladly to me—coming home! I could not have endured the silence much longer."

Martin put his arm around Doris and led her to the hearth. A mild little fire was crackling cheerfully, rather shyly, between the tall jars of dogwood that seemed to question the necessity of the small blaze.

"Davey, I want to talk to you. There are so many things to say if you are absent twenty-four hours. How goes the cabin?"

"Like magic. It will be livable by June or before. The men like to have me pothering around, and I've discovered that one never really has a house unless he helps build it. I'm going to get Bud down the minute I can put a bed up. And, Doris——"

"Yes, Davey."

"I've been eavesdropping, I've been here a half hour. I heard what Nancy said—let the child have her wish!"

"You feel that way, David? I had hoped to have everything rather splendid—to make up for what I could not do for—Merry."

"All stuff and nonsense! Give the girl her head. She knows her path and will not make mistakes. What she wants is Raymond and her own life. Nancy is simple and direct; no complications about her. Don't make any for her."

"David, her happiness and peace almost frighten me. You remember how she drooped last summer? Taking her to New York has done more than give her love and happiness. She is quite another girl, so resourceful and clear visioned."

"She's on her own trail, Doris, that's all. Things are right with Nancy. The rule holds."

"But, David, I have not told her yet——"

"Told her?—oh! I see—about the birth mix-up?"

Martin smiled—he always did when the subject was referred to. The humour and daring of it had never lost their zest.

"It is no laughing matter, Davey; as the time draws near when I must tell I am in a kind of panic. I always thought it would be easy; if it had been right why should I know this fear?"

Martin was serious enough now. He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair—he held Doris with his calm gray eyes.

"It seems to me," he spoke thoughtfully, "that you should stand by your guns. You did what you did from the highest motives; you have succeeded marvellously—why upset the kettle of fish, my dear?"

Doris's face softened.

"I think if I had committed murder," she said, "you would try to defend the deed."

"I certainly would!"

They smiled into each other's eyes at this.

"But, David, I am afraid to tell Nancy. Somehow I think the doubt would hurt her more cruelly than the real truth might have. It has always been the not knowing that mattered to Nan—unless what was to be known was a happy thing. Merry was like that, you remember."

"Then why run a risk with Nancy, Doris?"

Martin had the look in his eyes with which he scanned the face of a patient who could not be depended upon to describe his own symptoms.

"I—think—Ken should know."

"What?"

"Why—why—what there is to know!"

"Just muddle him. Nancy would be the same girl, but he'd get to puzzling over her and tagging ideas on her—and to what end, Doris? The girl has the right to her own path and you have, by the grace of God, pushed obstacles from before her, in heaven's name give her fair play and don't—flax out at this stage of the game."

"But, Davey, if in the future anything should disclose the truth, might Ken not resent?"

"I don't see why he should. When the hour struck you could call him into the family circle and share the news. By that time he'd feel secure in his own right about Nancy."

"I'm not afraid of, or for, Joan, Davey." Doris lifted her head proudly. "And, David, I want to tell you now that my coming to The Gap was more on the children's account than my own. I have always felt that here, if anywhere, the truth might be exposed. At first I was anxious; fearful yet hopeful. I know now that The Gap has no suspicions, and I am more and more confident that George Thornton has passed from our lives."

"Very good!" Martin sat up and bent forward in order to take Doris's hands in his own.

"My dear," he said, gently, "have you never thought that—Nancy is—your own?"

"Yes, Davey, I have grown to believe it. She is very like Meredith—not in looks, but in her character and habits. She is stronger, happier than Merry, and oh! Davey, for that very reason I hesitate to touch the beautiful faith and love of the child. I do not want her disillusioned. It would kill her as it did Merry."

"Then, again I caution against risks, especially when the odds are with Nancy, not against her."

The fire burned low—a mere twinkle in the white ashes, then David asked as one does ask a useless question:

"Are those words over the fireplace, Doris?" He puckered his near-sighted eyes.

"I think so. There are carvings and paintings everywhere through the house. One of the Sisters did them. This one is so blackened by smoke that it is all but destroyed—some day I will see what can be done to restore it."

"I like the idea," Martin said. "I mean to have something over my fireplace. It sort of strikes one in the face."

Presently Doris spoke, going back past the interruption:

"Davey, the wonderful thing to me is that while believing Nancy to be Merry's child I find my heart clinging passionately to Joan. I know how you disapprove of her—but I glory in her. Through this anxious time I have been able to follow her, understand her better, even, than I have Nan. Joan has often seemed like—well, like myself set free. I might have been like Joan in many ways. And, Davey, this could not have happened had I known the real truth concerning the girls."

"No, I do not think it could. And it goes to prove my theory that two thirds of the inherited traits are common to us all. The whole business lies in the handling of them by the one third that does come down the line. The thing we know as the ancient law of inheritance. Doris, take my advice and keep your hands off."

"Oh! Davey. To keep my hands off is so easy that it doesn't seem safe or right."

David smiled, then said:

"There are times, Doris, when I fear that you should be taken by the roots and—transplanted. The old soil is used up."

"I—I do not understand, David."

"Don't try! Come, now, I want you to take a rest. Go on the porch in the sun, I'll wrap you warm. I'm going to take Nancy over to the cabin for lunch and plan her wedding with her. This afternoon you and I are going for a drive—the roads have settled somewhat and I want your advice about things to put in my garden."

As he spoke Martin was leading Doris to the piazza, gathering rugs and pillows in one arm as he went.

"I am so happy, David, so unspeakably happy." Doris sank into her pillows and smiled up at the face bending over her. "It's beautiful, all this care and love, and I have a feeling that I will be able, soon, to really live. I have had so much without paying the price."

"And you'd mess it all, would you, Doris, when you don't know what the price is?"

"No, David, I wouldn't."

Martin walked into the house and whistled to Nancy. She responded, so did the hounds and a new litter of long-eared pups.

Doris, with closed eyes, smiled and then she thought. She, too, was planning for Nancy's wedding—she saw the small altar in the Chapel flower-decked; they must have some music, perhaps Joan would sing one of her lovely, quaint songs—and then Doris slept while the sun lay on her peaceful face and the sound of the busy river soothed her.

* * * * *

It was like Joan to do exactly what she did.

After two deplorable days in the little hotel—days devoted to collecting her belongings and eating and sleeping—she suddenly found herself so strong that she sent the telegram to The Gap.

Having sent it, she meant to prepare carefully against shock at her appearance by buying a rather giddy hat and coat to offset her short hair and thin body. Cameron had insisted, at the last, that she reserve her cash for emergencies and repay him later.

Joan accepted this solution, and having arrayed herself frivolously she bought Cuff a most remarkable collar which embarrassed the dog considerably. In all the changing events of Cuff's life a collar had not figured, and it was harder to adjust himself to it than to foots of beds and meals served on plates. However, Cuff rose to the emergency and bore himself with credit.

Twice Cameron came to the hotel; twice he took Joan for a drive—"It will help you get on your feet," he explained.

"I—I don't quite see how," she faltered and, as they were driving where once she and Raymond had driven, her eyes were tear-filled. The old, dangerous, foolish past had a most depressing effect upon her.