rry, a fugitive in danger
from so many enemies, perhaps after all undeserved enemies--Larry,
who looked to be making good on his boast to achieve success through
honesty--Larry, who had again told her that he loved her. She liked Dick
Sherwood--she really did. But Larry--that was something different.

And thus she thought on, drawn this way and that, and unable to reach a
decision. But with most people, when in a state of acute mental turmoil,
that which has been most definite in the past, instinct, habit of mind,
purpose, tradition, becomes at least temporarily the dominant factor
through the mere circumstance that it has existed powerfully before,
through its comparative stability, through its semi-permanence. And so
with Maggie. She had for that one afternoon almost been won over against
herself by the workings of Larry's secret diplomacy. Then had come
the natural reaction. And now in her turmoil, in so far as she had any
decision, it was instinctively to go right ahead in the direction in
which she had been going.

But on the sixth day of her uncertainty, just after Dick had called on
her and she had provisionally accepted an invitation to Cedar Crest for
the following afternoon, a danger which she had half seen from the
start burst upon her without a moment's warning. It came into her
sitting-room, just before her dinner hour, in the dual form of Barney
and Old Jimmie. The faces of both were lowering.

"Get rid of that boob chaperon of yours!" gritted Barney. "We're going
to have some real talk!"

Maggie stepped to the connecting door, sent Miss Grierson on an
inconsequential errand, and returned.

"You're looking as pleasant as if you were sitting for a new photograph,
Barney. What gives you that sweet expression?"

"You'll cut out your comic-supplement stuff in just one second," Barney
warned her. "We both saw young Sherwood awhile ago as he was leaving the
Grantham, and he told us everything!"

Persiflage did indeed fail Maggie. "Everything?" she exclaimed. "What's
everything?"

"He told us about proposing to you almost a week ago, and about your
refusing him. And you lied to us--kept us sitting round, wasting our
time--and all the while you've been double-crossing us!"

Those visitors from South and West, especially the women, who a few
nights before on the roof had regarded Barney as the perfect courtier,
would not have so esteemed him if they had seen him at the present
moment. He seized Maggie's