him yet, but if you and the General are willing to
try it, Leila, we will take you home."

"I haven't fought in fifty battles to show the white feather now," said
the General, and Leila chirruped, "I'd love it," and presently, with
Barry in devoted attendance, they drove off.

Mary, waiting on the porch for Porter to telephone for his own car,
which was to take them around the Speedway, looked eagerly toward the
fountain. The moon had gone under a cloud, and while she caught the
gleam of the water, the hundred-leaved bush hid the bench. Was Roger
Poole there? Alone?

She heard Porter's voice behind her. "Mary," he said, "I've brought a
heavy wrap. And the car will be here in a minute."

Aunt Isabelle had given him the green wrap with the fur. She slipped
into it silently, and he turned the collar up about her neck.

"I'm not going to have you shivering as you did in that thin red
thing," he said.

She drew away. It was good of him to take care of her, but she didn't
want his care. She didn't want that tone, that air of possession.
She was not Porter's. She belonged to herself. And to no one else.
She was free.

With the quick proud movement that was characteristic of her, she
lifted her head. Her eyes went beyond Porter, beyond the porch, to the
Tower Rooms where a light flared, suddenly. Roger Poole was not in the
garden; he had gone up without saying "Good-night."

CHAPTER XI

_In Which Roger Writes a Letter; and in Which a Rose Blooms Upon the
Pages of a Book._

_In the Tower Rooms, Midnight----_

It is best to write it. What I might have said to you in the garden
would have been halting at best. How could I speak it all with your
clear eyes upon me--all the sordid history of those years which are
best buried, but whose ghosts to-night have risen again?

If in these months--this year that I have lived in these rooms, I have
seemed to hide that which you will now know, it was not because I
wanted to set myself before you as something more than I am. Not that
I wished to deceive. It was simply that the thought of the old life
brought a surging sense of helplessness, of hopelessness, of rebellion
against fate, Having put it behind me, I have not wished to talk about
it--to think about it--to have it, in all its tarnished tragedy, held
up before your earnest, shining eyes.

For you have never known such things as I have to tell you, Mary
Ballard. There has been sorrow in your li