ain little gown--and a long coat whose high
collar rose around her grave face. She wore no hat and the light and
shade did marvellous things to her hair. There were times when
Northrup could not take his eyes from that shining head.

"Why are you stopping?" Mary-Clare would ask at such lapses.

"My writing is diabolical!" Northrup lied.

"Oh! I'm sorry. The stops give me a jog. Go on."

And Northrup would go on!

Without fully being aware of it, until the thing was done, Mary-Clare
got vividly into the story.

And Northrup was doing some good, some daring work. His man, born from
his own doubts, aspirations, and cravings, was a live and often a
blundering creature who could not be disregarded. He was safe enough,
but it was the woman who now gave trouble.

Northrup saw, with fear and trembling, that he had drawn her, so he
devoutly believed, so close to reality that he felt that Mary-Clare
would discover her at once and resent the impertinence. But he need
not have held any such thought. Mary-Clare was far too impersonal; far
too absorbed a nature to be largely concerned with herself, and
Northrup had failed absolutely in his deductions, as he was soon to
learn.

What Mary-Clare did see in Northrup's heroine was a maddening
possibility that he was letting slip through his fingers. At first
this puzzled her; pained her. She was still timid about expressing her
feeling. But so strong was Northrup's touch in most of his work that
at last he drove his quiet, silent critic from her moorings. She asked
that she might have a copy of a certain part of the book.

"I want to think it out with my woman-brain," she laughingly
explained. "When you read right at this spot--well, you see, it
doesn't seem clear. When I have thought it out alone, then I will tell
you and be--oh! very bold."

And Northrup had complied.

He had blazed for himself, some time before, a roundabout trail
through the briery underbrush from the inn to within a few hundred
feet of the cabin. Often he watched from this hidden limit. He saw the
smoke rise from the chimney; once or twice he caught a glimpse of
Mary-Clare sitting at the rough table, and, after she had taken those
chapters away, he knew they were being read there.

Alone, waiting, expecting he knew not what, Northrup became alarmingly
aware that Mary-Clare had got a tremendous hold upon him. The
knowledge was almost staggering. He had felt so sure; had risked so
much.

He could not