ere
had been a delay. The letter had been several days longer than usual in
reaching him. What if she had grown tired of awaiting the asked-for
cable, and had chosen to take silence for consent?

The certainty that this was so seized upon Denin. He was suddenly as
sure that Barbara was on the way to him, as if he had just heard the
news of her starting. If, honestly and at the bottom of his heart he
wanted to save her a tragic awakening from dreams, he must leave
nothing to chance. He must be up and doing. It was not impossible, even
if she had waited four days for a cable, and started impulsively off on
the fifth, that she might walk in at the gate of the Mirador garden, a
week from that night, so Denin hastily calculated. How was he to be
gone before she came--if she did come--without humiliating the dear
visitor by seeming deliberately to avoid her? How could John
Sanbourne's absence be accounted for in some reasonable and impersonal
way, if Lady Denin arrived at Santa Barbara enquiring for him?

In his need of a pretext, he recalled the offer which he had laughed
at; Carl Pohlson Bradley's offer to buy the Mirador in its garden. The
man would snap at the chance to get his way so soon. In a few days the
business could be settled, and Sanbourne could be gone. But where? And
Denin sought anxiously to provide the "good reason" at which he had
hinted to Barbara, in his cable forbidding her to come.

Even if he had sold the Mirador before receiving his friend's letter,
he might have waited to see her. He could have stayed on in a hotel, if
the new owner of the place had been impatient. No, selling his house
was but one step of the journey. What should the next one be?

Almost instantly the solution of the whole difficulty presented itself
to his mind. A few days before, he had sent a subscription to a fund
for organizing a relief expedition to Serbia. The appeal had come to
John Sanbourne through his publisher. And even as he wrote his check,
he had thought, if it were not for the exquisite bond of friendship
which tied him to a fixed address--the address of the Mirador--how easy
it would be to give himself as well as his money, to the cause of
Serbia in distress. Not only doctors and nurses were wanted for the
expedition, but men of independent means, able to act as hospital
orderlies and in other ways.

Physically, Denin had not yet got back the full measure of his old
strength. After all these months, he would be