"I can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?"

"Mary--"

"No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more--please--"

"MARY--"

"Never, never, never!" she cried, in a passion of tears. "You mustn't
come any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never, never!"

Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he
got himself to the door and out of the house.

CHAPTER XXX

Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to
the New House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but
so that the others might hear.

"When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would
be apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right," he said. "I
thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me.
It proved what you said of me, and disproved what you said of her. She
refused."

And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he
had entered it.

"He's SO queer!" Mrs. Sheridan gasped. "Who on earth would thought of
his doin' THAT?"

"I told you," said her husband, grimly.

"You didn't tell us he'd go over there and--"

"I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM,
didn't I?"

Sibyl was altogether taken aback. "Do you supose it's true? Do you
suppose she WOULDN'T?"

"He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed
up fine with his girl," said Sheridan. "Not to me, he didn't!"

"But why would--"

"I told you," he interrupted, angrily, "she ain't that kind of a girl!
If you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with,
though I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about
my dead boy's private affairs. She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him,
and it was a good, straight letter, too. It came to Jim's office; he
never saw it. She wrote it the afternoon he was hurt."

"I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon," said
Roscoe. "Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it--I was waiting
for you while you were in there so long talking to her mother. It was
just before we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came
and called me."

Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered. And she was not cast down,
for, although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they
were dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed--after
some further fragmentary discourse--visibly elated. After all,