r."

Kathryn rose. So did Mary-Clare. The two girls faced each other. The
table lay between them, but it seemed the width of the whole world.

"I would have helped you and him, if I could." Mary-Clare's voice
sounded like the "ghost wind" seeking wearily, in a lost way, rest.
"But I see that I cannot. This is not Mr. Northrup's Place--it is
mine. I built it myself--no foot but mine--and now yours--has ever
entered here. I have always come here to--to think; to read. I wonder
if I ever will be able to again, for you have done something very
dreadful to it. You will do it to his life unless God keeps you from
it." Mary-Clare was thinking aloud, taking no heed of her companion.

"How dare you!" Kathryn's face flamed and then turned pale as death.

Mary-Clare was moving toward the door. When she reached it she stood
as a hostess might while a guest departed.

"Please go!" she said simply, but it had the effect of taking Kathryn
by the shoulders and forcing her outside. With flaming face, dyeing
the white anger, she flung herself along. Once outside she turned,
looking cheap and mean for all the trappings of her station in life.

"I want you to understand," she said, "that you are dealing with a
woman of the world, not a sentimental fool."

Mary-Clare inclined her head. She did not speak. She watched her
uninvited guest go down the trail, pass out of sight. Then she went
back to her chair to recover from the shock that had dazed her.

The atmosphere of the little cabin could not long be polluted by so
brief an experience as had just occurred, and presently Mary-Clare was
enfolded by the old comfort and vision.

She could weigh and estimate things now, and this she did bravely,
justly. Like Northrup in Larry's cabin the night before, she became
more a sensitive plate upon which pictures flashed, than a personality
that was thinking and suffering. Such things as had now happened to
her, she knew, happened in books. Always books, books, for Mary-Clare,
and the old doctor's philosophy that gave strength but no assurance.
The actual relation existing between Northrup and herself became a
solid and immovable fact. She had not fully accepted it before;
neither had he. They had played with it as they had the golden hours
that they would not count or measure.

Nothing mattered but the truth. Mary-Clare knew that the wonderful
thing had had no part in her decision as to Larry--others would not
believe that, but she must not