It was big."

"Big? How?"

"The sweep--the ideas. So high--so universal! Makes a tremendous appeal
to--the imagination."

She smiled toward him shyly. "It's something, isn't it, to appeal to the
imagination?"

"Oh, lots--since imagination rules the world."

* * * * *

They were on their way to lunch with Thor's father and stepmother. Now
that there were two households in the family, the father insisted on a
domestic reunion once a week. It was his way of expressing paternal
forbearance under the blow Thor had dealt him in marrying Lois
Willoughby.

"Where's Claude?"

Thor asked the question on sitting down to table. His father looked at
his mother, who replied, with some self-consciousness:

"He's--he's gone West."

"West? Where?"

"To Chicago first, isn't it, Archie?"

Masterman admitted that it was to Chicago first, and to the Pacific
coast afterward. Thor's dismay was such that Lois looked at him in
surprise. "Why, Thor? What difference can it make to you? Claude's able
to travel alone, isn't he?"

The efforts made by both his parents to carry off the matter lightly
convinced Thor that there was more in Claude's departure than either
business or pleasure would explain. Before Lois, who was not yet in the
family secret, he could ask no questions; but it seemed to him that both
his father and his mother had uneasiness written in their faces. He
could hardly eat. He bolted his food only to put Lois off the scent. The
old tumult in his soul which he was seeking every means to still was
beginning to break out again. If it should prove that he had given up
Rosie Fay to Claude, and that, with his parents' connivance, Claude was
trying to abandon her, then, by God....

But he caught Lois's eye. She was watching him, not so much in
disquietude as with faint amusement. It seemed odd to her that Claude's
going away for a holiday should vex him so. Poor Lois! He was already
afraid on her account--afraid that if Rosie Fay were left
deserted--free!--and a temptation he couldn't resist were to come to
him!--Lois would be the one to suffer most.

By the middle of the afternoon, when his father had gone off in one
direction and Lois in another, he found an opportunity for the word with
his stepmother which he had hung about the house to get.

"There's nothing behind this, is there?"

She averted her head. "How do I know, Thor? _I_ had nothing to do with
it. All I know is just wha