"Are you corresponding with him, Mary?"

Resenting his catechism, she forced herself to say, quietly, "We write

now and then."

"What does Porter think of that?"

"Porter hasn't anything to do with it."

"He has, too. You know you'll marry him, Mary."

"I shall not. I haven't the least idea of marrying Porter."

"Then why do you let him hang around you?"

"Barry," she was blazing, "I don't let him hang around. He comes as he

has always come--to see us all."

"Do you think for a moment that he'd come if it weren't for you? He

isn't craving my society, or Aunt Isabelle's, or Susan Jenks'."

Barry was glad to blame somebody else for something--he was aware of

himself as the blackest sheep in the fold, but let those who had other

sins hear them.

He flung himself away from her--out of the house. And for days he did

not come home. They kept the reason of his absence from Leila, and as

far as they could from Constance. But Mary went nearly wild with

anxiety, and she found in Gordon a strength and a resourcefulness on

which she leaned.

When Barry came back, he offered no further objections to their plans.

Yet they could see that he was consenting to his exile only because he

had no argument with which to meet theirs. He refused to resign from

the Patent Office until the last moment, as if hoping for some reprieve

from the sentence which his family had pronounced. He was moody,

irritable, a changed boy from the one who had hippity-hopped with Leila

on Constance's wedding night.

Even Leila saw the change. "Barry, dear," she said one evening as she

sat beside him in her father's library, "Barry--is it because you hate

to leave--me?"

He turned to her almost fiercely. "If I had a penny of my own, Leila,

I'd pick you up, and we'd go to the ends of the earth together."

And she responded breathlessly, "It would be heavenly, Barry."

He dallied with temptation. "If we were married, no one could take you

away from me."

"No one will ever take me away."

"I know. But they might try to make you give me up."

"Why should they?"

"They'll say that I'm not worthy--that I'm a poor idiot who can't earn

a living for his wife."

"Oh, Barry," she whispered, "how can any one say such things?" She

knelt on a little stool beside him, and her brown hair curled madly

about her pink cheeks. "Oh, Barry," she said again, "why not--why not

get married now, and show them that we can live on what you make, and

then you needn't go--away."




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