remark was made he was afraid that she might
interpret it as a plea for companionship. And he had no right----
What earthly right had he to expect to enter this charmed circle?

Susan Jenks came in with her arms full of wraps. "Mr. Porter's
coming," she said, "and it's eight o'clock now."

"We are going out----" Mary was interested to note that her lodger had
taken Aunt Isabelle's wrap, and was putting her into it without
self-consciousness.

Her own wrap was of a shimmering gray-green velvet which matched her
eyes, and there was a collar of dark fur.

"It's a pretty thing," Roger said, as he held it for her. "It's like
the sea in a mist."

She flashed a quick glance at him. "I like that," she said in her
straightforward way. "It is lovely. Aunt Frances brought it to me
last year from Paris. Whenever you see me wear anything that is
particularly nice, you'll know that it came from Aunt Frances--Aunt
Isabelle's sister. She's the rich member of the family. And all the
rest of us are as poor as poverty."

Outside a motor horn brayed. Then Porter Bigelow came in--a perfectly
put together young man, groomed, tailored, outfitted according to the
mode.

"Are you ready, Contrary Mary?" he said, then saw Roger and stopped.

Porter was a gentleman, so his manner to Roger Poole showed no hint of
what he thought of lodgers in general, and this one in particular. He
shook hands and said a few pleasant and perfunctory things. Personally
he thought the man looked down and out. But no one could tell what
Mary might think. Mary's standards were those of the dreamer and the
star gazer. What she was seeking she would never find in a Mere Man.
The danger lay however, in the fact that she might mistakenly hang her
affections about the neck of some earth-bound Object and call it an
Ideal.

As for himself, in spite of his Buff-Orpington crest, and his
cock-o'-the-walk manner, Porter was, as far Mary was concerned,
saturated with humility. He knew that his money, his family's social
eminence were as nothing in her eyes. If underneath the weight of
these things Mary could find enough of a man in him to love that could
be his only hope. And that hope had held him for years to certain
rather sedate ambitions, and had given him moral standards which had
delighted his mother and had puzzled his father.

"Whatever I am as a man, you've made me," he said to Mary two hours
later, in the intermission between the second