ime amid all the confusion of Constance's flight from the home nest.
That night he had seemed to her merely a person who would pay the
rent--yet the money which she had received from him had been the
smallest part.

She drifted away on the tide of her dreams, and Porter felt sharply the
sense of her utter detachment from him.

"Mary," he said, tensely, "Mary, oh, my little Contrary Mary--you
aren't going to slip out of my life. Say that you won't."

"I'm not slipping away from you," she said, "any more than I am
slipping away from my old self. I don't understand it, Porter. I only
know that what you call contrariness is a force within me which I can't
control. I wish that I could do the things which you want me to do, I
wish I could be what Gordon and Constance and Barry and even Aunt
Frances want--but there's something which carries me on and on, and
seems to say, 'There's more than this in the world for you'--and with
that call in my ears, I have to follow."

He rose, and his head was up. "All my life, I have wanted just one
thing which has been denied me--and that one thing is you. And no
other man shall take you from me. I suppose I've got to set myself
another season of patience. But I can wait, because in the end I shall
get what I want--remember that, Mary."

"Don't be too sure, Porter."

"I am so sure," lifting the hand which was weighted with the heavy
ring, "I am so sure, that I will make a wager with fortune, that the
day will come when this ring shall be our betrothal ring, I'll give you
others, Mary, but this shall be the one which shall bind you to me."

She snatched her hand away. "You speak as if you were--sure," she said.

"I am. I'm going to let you work and do as you please for a little
while, if you must. But in the end I'm going to marry you, Mary."

At dinner Mary announced the contents of her letter in the long
envelope. "I have received my appointment as stenographer in the
Treasury, and I'm to report for duty on the twentieth."

It was Aunt Frances who recovered first from the shock. "Well, if you
were my child----"

Grace, with little points of light in her eyes, spoke smoothly, "If
Mary were your child, she would be as dutiful as I am, mother. But you
see she isn't your child."

Aunt Frances snorted--"Dutiful."

Gordon was glowering. "It is rank foolishness."

Mary flared. "That's your point of view, Gordon. You judge me by
Constance. But Constance has always