crutable. He returned my glance steadily. It was infuriating to have
gone half-way to meet him, as I had, and then to find him intrenched in
his self-sufficiency again. I got up.

"It is unfortunate that our acquaintance has begun so unfavorably," I
remarked, preparing to pass him. "Under other circumstances we might
have been friends."

"There is only one solace," he said. "When we do not have friends, we
can not lose them."

He opened the door to let me pass out, and as our eyes met, all the
coldness died out of his. He held out his hand, but I was hurt. I
refused to see it.

"Kit!" he said unsteadily. "I--I'm an obstinate, pig-headed brute. I am
sorry. Can't we be friends, after all?"

"'When we do not have friends we can not lose them,'" I replied with
cool malice. And the next instant the door closed behind me.

It was that night that the really serious event of the quarantine
occurred.

We were gathered in the library, and everybody was deadly dull. Aunt
Selina said she had been reared to a strict observance of the Sabbath,
and she refused to go to bed early. The cards and card tables were put
away and every one sat around and quarreled and was generally nasty,
except Bella and Jim, who had gone into the den just after dinner and
firmly closed the door.

I think it was just after Max proposed to me. Yes, he proposed to me
again that night. He said that Jim's illness had decided him; that any
of us might take sick and die, shut in that contaminated atmosphere, and
that if he did he wanted it all settled. And whether I took him or not
he wanted me to remember him kindly if anything happened. I really
hated to refuse him--he was in such deadly earnest. But it was quite
unnecessary for him to have blamed his refusal, as he did, on Mr.
Harbison. I am sure I had refused him plenty of times before I had
ever heard of the man. Yes, it was just after he proposed to me that
Flannigan came to the door and called Mr. Harbison out into the hall.

Flannigan--like most of the people in the house--always went to Mr.
Harbison when there was anything to be done. He openly adored him,
and--what was more--he did what Mr. Harbison ordered without a word,
while the rest of us had to get down on our knees and beg.

Mr. Harbison went out, muttering something about a storm coming up, and
seeing that the tent was secure. Betty Mercer went with him. She had
been at his heels all evening, and called him "Tom" on every possible
o