f him in the house."

"Why not?"

"Oh, he sees you every day. Talks to you every day. And what do you
know of him? And I who've known you all my life must be content with
scrappy minutes with other people around. And anyhow--I believe I'd be
jealous of Satan himself, Mary."

They were under the porch now, and she drew away from him a bit,
surveying him with disapproving eyes.

"You aren't like yourself to-night, Porter."

He put one hand on her shoulder and stood looking down at her. "How
can I be? What am I going to do when I leave you, Mary, and face the
fact that you don't care--that I'm no more to you--than that fellow up
there in the--tower?"

He straightened himself, then with the madness of his earlier mood upon
him, he said one thing more before he left her:

"Contrary Mary, if I weren't such a coward, and you weren't
so--wonderful--I'd kiss you now--and _make_ you--care----"

CHAPTER IV

_In Which a Little Bronze Boy Grins in the Dark; and in Which Mary
Forgets That There is Any One Else in the House._

Up-stairs among his books Roger Poole heard Mary come in. With the
curtains drawn behind him to shut out the light, he looked down into
the streaming night, and saw Porter drive away alone.

Then Mary's footstep on the stairs; her raised voice as she greeted
Aunt Isabelle, who had waited up for her. A door was shut, and again
the house sank into silence.

Roger turned to his books, but not to read. The old depression was
upon him. In the glow of his arrival, he had been warmed by the hope
that things could be different; here in this hospitable house he had,
perchance, found a home. So he had gone down to find that he was an
outsider--an alien--old where they were young, separated from Barry and
Porter and Mary by years of dark experience.

To him, at this moment, Mary Ballard stood for a symbol of the things
which he had lost. Her youth and light-heartedness, her high courage,
and now, perhaps, her romance. He knew the look that was in Porter
Bigelow's eyes when they had rested upon her. The look of a man who
claims--his own. And behind Bigelow's pleasant and perfunctory
greeting Roger had felt a subtle antagonism. He smiled bitterly. No
man need fear him. He was out of the running. He was done with love,
with romance, with women, forever. A woman had spoiled his life.

Yet, if before the other, he had met Mary Ballard? The possibilities
swept over him. His life to