res her, Mary."

"Oh, he loves her. And he'll do everything for her, but he will do it
as if she were a child. He won't ask her opinion in any vital matter.
He won't share his big interests with her, and so he'll never discover
the big fine womanliness. And she'll shrivel to his measure of her."

Aunt Isabelle shook her head, smiling. "Don't analyze too much, Mary.
Men and women are human--and you may lose yourself in a search for the
Ideal."

"Do you know what Porter calls me, Aunt Isabelle? Contrary Mary. He
says I never do things the way the people expect. Yet I do them the
way that I must. It is as if some force were inside of me--driving
me--on."

She stood up as she said it, stretching out her arms in an eager
gesture. "Aunt Isabelle, if I were a man, there'd be something in the
world for me to do. Yet here I am, making ends meet, holding up my
part of the housekeeping with Susan Jenks, and taking from the hands of
my rich friends such pleasures as I dare accept without return."

Aunt Isabelle pulled her down beside her. "Rebellious Mary," she said,
"who is going to tame you?"

They laughed a little, clinging to each other, and than Mary said, "You
must go to bed, Aunt Isabelle. I'm keeping you up shamefully."

They kissed again and separated, and Mary made ready for bed. She took
off her cap, and all her lovely hair fell about her. That was another
of her contrary ways. She and Constance had been taught to braid it
neatly, but from little girlhood Mary had protested, and on going to
bed with two prim pigtails had been known to wake up in the middle of
the night and take them down, only to be discovered in the morning with
all her fair curls in a tangle. Scolding had not availed. Once, as
dire punishment, the curls had been cut off. But Mary had rejoiced.
"It makes me look like a boy," she had told her mother, calmly, "and I
like it."

Another of her little girl fancies had been to say her prayers aloud.
She said them that way to-night, kneeling by her bed with her fair head
on her folded hands.

Then she turned out the light, and drew her curtains back. As she
looked out at the driving rain, the flare of the street lamp showed a
motionless figure on the terrace. For a moment she peered,
palpitating, then flew into Aunt Isabelle's room.

"There's some one in the garden."

"Perhaps it's Barry."

"Didn't he come with you?"

"No. He went on with Leila and the General."

"But it