lf for her inability to analyze that strange mood which, twice
in the last few nights, had sent her with aching throat and wet cheeks
into Miriam's room, she was within arm's length of the dark figure in
the hedge gap through which she had just come, before she was aware of
its presence. Stephen O'Mara, weatherbeaten hat in hand, was standing
there in her path, peering steadily at the stucco and timber lodge
alight from end to end like a huge and sprawling glow-worm.

Even in that first moment when she stopped and caught her breath,
audibly, from sheer surprise, the girl sensed the indecision in the
attitude of the man before her. But she could not know that it was not
a thing of the moment--that irresolution; could not know that
throughout the week Steve had periodically abused himself for his
inability to settle the question once and for all, and leave his brain
free for more important things. Just as often as he told himself that
he would not go, he had found himself reopening the mental discussion,
and yet--and strangely enough--it was not the recollection of Barbara's
repeated invitations, or even her distress over Garry Devereau, who had
been ceaselessly in his thoughts ever since she had spoken of him,
which finally achieved the decision. An insistent desire again to meet
the Honorable Archibald Wickersham in the end led him to request Fat
Joe to hook up the team, that day at noon, for the long drive down
river. With Steve himself handling the reins, they had rolled the
thirty miles at a speed which might have mildly surprised Fat Joe had
he not been accustomed to putting two and two together to make six or
eight or more. And Fat Joe's thin tenor was just drifting faintly off
down the hill--a mournful rendition of "Home, Sweet Home"--when the
girl stepped noiselessly forward and put a hand, feather-light, upon
the man's arm.

Again she felt the swift tensing of the flesh beneath; she fell back a
step before the startling abruptness with which Steve whirled. She
even threw up one small hand, as if to shield her face. And then, the
cloak falling open at her throat, a slender, swaying figure in blue and
shimmering white, she stood and flung a little laugh at him--a laugh a
little unsteady, a bit tinged with mockery, and as untroubled as the
spirit of youth itself.

"Is that the way you always prepare to greet your friends?" she asked.

The man just stood and stared at her--stared much as if he mistrusted