. But there was more than grimness,
infinitely more, in the expression of his clear, glowing eyes.

Aggie thought that it was her turn to voice herself, which she did
without undue restraint.

"Perhaps, we do, but I dunno! I'll tell you one thing, though. If any
dame sent me up for three years and then wanted money from me, do you
think she'd get it? Wake me up any time in the night and ask me. Not
much--not a little bit much! I'd hang on to it like an old woman to her
last tooth." And that was Aggie's final summing up of her impressions
concerning the scene she had just witnessed.

CHAPTER XII. A BRIDEGROOM SPURNED.

After Aggie's vigorous comment there followed a long silence. That
volatile young person, little troubled as she was by sensitiveness,
guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be
distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette
and the illustrations of a popular magazine devoted to the stage. As for
the man, his reticence was really from a fear lest in speaking at all
he might speak too freely, might betray the pervasive violence of his
feeling. So, he sat motionless and wordless, his eyes carefully
avoiding Mary in order that she might not be disturbed by the invisible
vibrations thus sent from one to another. Mary herself was shaken to the
depths. A great weariness, a weariness that cried the worthlessness
of all things, had fallen upon her. It rested leaden on her soul. It
weighed down her body as well, though that mattered little indeed. Yet,
since she could minister to that readily, she rose and went to a settee
on the opposite side of the room where she arranged herself among the
cushions in a posture more luxurious than her rather precise early
training usually permitted her to assume in the presence of others.
There she rested, and soon felt the tides of energy again flowing in
her blood, and that same vitality, too, wrought healing even for her
agonized soul, though more slowly. The perfect health of her gave her
strength to recover speedily from the shock she had sustained. It was
this health that made the glory of the flawless skin, white with a
living white that revealed the coursing blood beneath, and the crimson
lips that bent in smiles so tender, or so wistful, and the limpid
eyes in which always lurked fires that sometimes burst into flame, the
lustrous mass of undulating hair that sparkled in the sunlight like an
aureole to her fa