Eleanor had arrived from school just in time to fling herself heart and
soul into the enterprise. By a happy chance she had been allowed to spend
the week with the Randolph Bartletts, only reporting to her grandmother
from time to time for consultations regarding summer clothes. Her strange
indifference to this usually all-important question, together with her
insistent plea to remain in Kentucky all summer, might have aroused the
old lady's suspicion had she not long ago decided that the explanation of
all Eleanor's motives was perversity.

Every morning Eleanor and Mrs. Ranny went out to the farm, and worked
with enthusiasm. Each piece of furniture that was taken out of the crate
was hailed with delight and dragged from one place to another to try its
effect. The hanging of curtains was suspended while they rushed out to
see the newly arrived rabbits with their meek eyes and tremulous pink
mouths, or dashed out to the poultry-yard to have another look at the
downy little fluffs of yellow that were pretending to be chickens.

But the real excitement of the day was when the workmen had departed, and
Mr. Ranny came out with his machine laden with priceless treasures from
the ten-cent store, or later when Quin Graham dashed up the lane with
anything from a garden-spade to a bird-house in his hands, and with an
enthusiasm and energy in his soul that communicated themselves to all
concerned. Then everybody would talk at once, and everybody insist upon
showing everybody else what had been done since morning, and there was
more hanging of pictures and changing of furniture, and so much chatter
and laughter that it was a wonder anything was accomplished.

Mr. and Mrs. Ranny had agreed that they would make Valley Mead livable at
the least possible expense, looking forward to a future day to make the
improvements that would require much outlay of money. The pride and
satisfaction they took in their petty economies were such as only the
inexperienced wealthy can feel.

As for Quin, he moved through the enchanted days, blind, deaf, and dumb
to everything but Eleanor. She was the dazzling sun in whose effulgent
rays the rest of humanity floated like midges. So wholly blinded was he
by her radiant presence that he did not realize the darkness into which
he was about to be plunged until her departure was imminent.

The evening before she left found them perched upon the orchard stile, in
that stage of intimacy that permitted him to sit at her feet and toy
pensively with the tassel on her girdle while his eyes said the
unutterable things that his lips were forbidden to utter.

The sky was flooded with luminous color, neither blue nor pink, but
something deliciously between, and down below them fields of wheat
rippled under the magic light.

"We ought to go in," said Eleanor for the third time. "We've been out
here an outrageously long time."

"They won't miss us," pleaded Quin; "besides, it's our last night."

"Don't talk about it!" said Eleanor. "It makes me so cross to have to
leave it all at the most exciting time! When I get back everything will
be finished and the fun all over."

"When _are_ you coming back?"

"Not until September. We have to come home then. Something's going to
happen."

Quin stopped twisting the tassel and looked at her quickly.

"What?" he demanded.

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes."

"It's a wedding, Quin."

If the earth had suddenly quaked beneath him he could not have
experienced a more horrible sense of devastation. He put out a hand as if
to steady himself.

"You don't mean----" he began, and could get no further.

"Yes, I do. It's to be a home wedding, very quiet, with only the family,
and afterward they are going out to the coast."

"Who are?" he asked dully.

"Aunt Enid and Mr. Chester. After waiting for twenty years. Isn't it too
funny for words?"

Quin thought it was. He threw himself back and shouted. He had never
enjoyed a joke so much in his life. It seemed replete with humor,
especially when he shared with Eleanor the part he had played in bringing
them together and described the waltz on the landing the night of the
Easter party. With the arrogance of youth they laughed hilariously at the
late blooming romance.

"What about Queen Vic?" asked Quin. "How did they ever get her consent?"

"They didn't ask for it. After letting her keep them apart all these
years, they just announced that they were going to be married in
September. I expect she raised the roof; but when she saw it was all
settled and she couldn't unsettle it, she came around and told Aunt Enid
she could be married at home."

"Good work!" said Quin, who was genuinely fond of both Miss Enid and Mr.
Chester. "How is Miss Isobel taking it?"

"Better than you would think. I don't know what has come over Aunt
Isobel, she's so much nicer than she used to be. The boys out at the
hospital have made her over."

"Miss Isobel's a pippin," said Quin, in a tone that implied a compliment.
"You ought to have seen how she looked after me when I was sick. Has
Madam found out about her going out to camp?"

"Yes; but she hasn't stopped her. Something you said once about everybody
having a right to do his duty as he saw it made Aunt Isobel take a firm
stand and stick it out. You have certainly jolted the family out of its
ruts, Quin. Look at Uncle Ranny; would you ever take him for the same
person he was six months ago?"

Quin removed his enamored gaze from her face long enough to glance toward
the house, where the usually elegant useless Randolph was perched in the
crotch of an old ash tree, sawing off a dead limb, and singing as he
sawed.

"Well, when it comes to him, I guess I _have_ had a finger in the pie,"
said Quin with pardonable pride. "He hasn't slipped the trolley for two
months; and if he can stay on the track now, it will be a cinch for him
after the first of July. All he needed was a real interest in life, and a
chance to work things out for himself."

"It's what we all need," Eleanor said gloomily. "I wish I could do what I
liked."

"What would you do?"

"I'd go straight to New York and study for the stage. It isn't a
whim--it's what I've wanted most to do ever since I was a little girl. I
may not have any great talent, but Papa Claude thinks I have. So does
Captain Phipps. To have to wait a whole year until I'm of age is too
stupid for words. It's just some more of grandmother's tyranny, and I'm
not going to submit much longer; would you?"

Quin contemplated his clasped fists earnestly. For the first time, his
belief in the consent of the governed admitted of exceptions.

"I'd go a bit slow," he said, feeling his own way cautiously. "This stage
business is a doubtful proposition. I don't see where the fun comes in,
pretending to be somebody else all the time."

"You would if you didn't like being yourself. Besides, I don't live my
own life as it is."

"You will some day--when you get married."

"But that's just it! I don't intend to marry--I am going to devote my
whole life to my work."

Quin, having but recently recovered from the fear that she was
contemplating matrimony, now underwent a similar torture at her avowal
that she was not. The second possibility was only a shade less appalling
than the first.

"The trouble is," she went on very confidentially, "I am not interested
in anything in the world but my art."

"Oh, come now, Miss Eleanor!" Quin rallied her. "You know you were
interested in the work out at the camp."

"That's true. I except that."

"And you can't say you haven't been interested in our selling this farm,
and getting Mr. and Mrs. Ranny fixed up, and all that."

"Of course I've been interested in that; it's been no end of fun."

"And then," Quin pursued his point quite brazenly, "there's me. I hope
you are a little bit interested in me?"

She tried to take it lightly. "Interested in you? Why, of course I am. We
all are. Uncle Ranny was saying only this morning----"

"I don't care a hang what he said. It's _you_ I'm talking about. Do you
like me any better than you did in the spring?"

"You silly boy, I've always liked you."

"But I told you I wanted a lot. Have I made any headway?"

"Headway? I should say you have. I never saw such improvement! If the
university classes have done this much for you in four months, what will
you be by the end of the year?"

"That's right," said Quin bitterly. "Open the switch and sidetrack me!
But just tell me one thing: is there anybody you _are_ interested in?"

"Now, see here, Quin," said Eleanor peremptorily, "you haven't any right
to ask me questions like that. All I promised was that you could be my
chum."

"Yes; but I meant a chum plus."

"Well, you'd better look out or you will be a chum minus." Then she
caught sight of his eyes, and leaned forward in sudden contrition. "I'm
sorry to hurt you, Quin, but you must understand----"

"I do," he admitted miserably. "Only this week out here together, and the
way you've looked at me sometimes, made me kind of hope----" His voice
broke. "It's all right. I'll wait some more."

This was the time Eleanor should have carried out her intention of going
back to the house. Instead, she sat on in the deepening twilight under
the feminine delusion that she was being good to the miserable youth who
sat huddled close to her knees on the step below her.

Through his whole big being Quin was quivering with the sense of her
nearness, afraid to move for fear something stronger than his will would
make him seize her slender little body and crush it to him in an agony of
tenderness and yearning.

"How beautiful it is out here now!" she said softly. "Don't you love the
feel of wings everywhere? Little flying things going home? Everything
seems to be whispering!"

Quin did not answer. He sat silent and immovable until the light in the
valley had quite faded, and the twitter of the birds had been superseded
by the monotonous, mournful plaint of a whip-poor-will in a distant tree.
Then he stirred and looked up at Eleanor with a rueful smile.

"I know what's the matter with that damned old bird," he said. "He's in
love!"

                              CHAPTER 19

Notwithstanding the fact that the sale of the Martels' house was averted
and Rose's affair with Harold Phipps successfully terminated,
catastrophe, which was evidently due the family, arrived before the
summer had fairly begun. The irrepressible Claude had no sooner weighed
the anchor of responsibility than he set sail for New York to embark once
more on dramatic waters. He had secured a small part in a summer stock
company which would leave him ample time to work on "Phantom Love," which
he confidently counted upon to retrieve his fortunes. The withdrawal of
even his slender contribution to the household expenses made a
difference, especially as Edwin came down with the measles early in July.
Before the boy had got the green shade off his afflicted eyes, Cass was
laid low with typhoid fever.

No other event in the family could have wrought such disastrous results.
Rose was compelled to give up her position to nurse him, and while the
income ceased the expenses piled up enormously.

Nothing was more natural than that Quinby Graham should fling himself
into the breach. His intimacy with Cass had begun on the transport going
to France, and continued with unabated zeal until he was wounded in the
summer of 1918. For six months he had lost sight of him, only to find him
again in the hospital at Camp Zachary Taylor. He was not one to share the
privileges of Cass's home without also sharing its hardships.

"It's a shame we've got to take help from you," said Rose; "just when you
are beginning to get ahead, too!"

"You cut that out," said Quin. "I'd like to know if you didn't take me in
and treat me like one of the family? Ain't Cass the best friend a man
ever had? And wouldn't he do as much and more for me?"

But even Quin's salary failed to meet the emergency. Doctor's bills, drug
bills, grocery bills, became more and more formidable. One day Rose was
reduced to selling two of Papa Claude's autographed photographs.

"I wouldn't do that--yet," said Quin, who had begun to walk to the
factory to save carfare. "Those old boys and girls are his friends; we
can't sell them. I can see him now talking to 'em through his pipe smoke.
I ought to have some junk we can soak. Let's go see."

The investigation resulted in the conversion of a pair of new wing-toed
dancing-shoes and a silver cigarette-case into an ice-bag and an electric
fan.

"I could stand everything else," said Rose, "if we could just get the
children out of the house. Edwin is still as weak as a kitten, and Myrna
looks as if she might come down with the fever any day."

Quin had a brilliant idea. "Why not ship 'em both to the country? Ed
could come to town to work every day, and Myrna could help somebody
around the house."

"That sounds mighty fine; but who is going to take two children to board
for nothing?"

"I don't know yet," said Quin; "that's what I've got to find out."

That night he went out to Valley Mead and put the matter squarely up to
Mr. and Mrs. Ranny.

"We're up against it at our house," he said; "I want to borrow something
from you two good people."

"You can have anything we've got!" said Mr. Ranny rashly.

"Well, I want to borrow some fresh air for a couple of sick kids. I want
you to ask 'em out here for a week."

Mr. and Mrs. Ranny looked aghast at the preposterous suggestion, but Quin
gave them no time to demur. He plunged into explanation, and clinched his
argument by saying:

"Ed would only be here at night, and Myrna could help around the house.
They are bully youngsters. No end of fun, and they wouldn't give you a
bit of trouble."

"But I have only one maid!" protested Mrs. Ranny.

"What of that?" said Quin. "Myrna's used to working at home; she'd be
glad to help you."

"If it was anybody on earth but the Martels," Mr. Ranny objected, with
contracted brow. "The families have been at daggers' points for years.
Why, the very name of Martel makes mother see red."

"Well, the children aren't responsible for that!" Quin broke in
impatiently; then he pulled himself up. "However, if you don't want to do
'em a good turn, that settles it."

"But it doesn't settle it," said Mr. Ranny. "What are you going to do
with them?"

"Hanged if I know," said Quin; "but you bet I'll do something."

The conversation then wandered off to Eleanor, and Quin listened with
vague misgivings to accounts of her good times--yachting parties, tennis
tournaments, rock teas, shore dinners--all of which suggested to him an
appallingly unfamiliar world.

"I tell you who was up there for a week," said Mr. Ranny. "Harold Phipps.
You remember meeting him at our apartment last spring?"

"What's he doing there?" Quin demanded with such vehemence that they both
laughed.

"Probably making life miserable for Mother Bartlett," said Mrs. Ranny. "I
can't imagine how she ever consented to have him come, or how he ever had
the nerve to go, after the way they've treated him."

"Harold's not concerned with the feelings of the family," said Mr. Ranny;
"he is after Nell."

But Mrs. Ranny scorned the idea. "He looks upon her as a perfect child,"
she insisted; "besides, he's too lazy and conceited to be in love with
anybody but himself."

"That may be, but Nell's got him going all right."

Then the conversation veered back to the Martels, with the result that an
hour later Quin was on his way home bearing a gracefully worded note from
Mrs. Ranny inviting the children to spend the following week at Valley
Mead. But, in spite of the success of his mission, he sat with a box of
fresh eggs in his lap and a huge bunch of flowers in his hand, his hat
rammed over his eyes, staring gloomily out of the car window into the
starless night.

Since Eleanor's departure he had had no word from her, and the news that
filtered through Valley Mead was more disconcerting than the silence. The
thought of her dancing, sailing, and motoring with Harold Phipps filled
him with a frenzy of jealousy. He grew bitter at the thought of her
flitting heedlessly from one luxurious pleasure to another, while Cass
lay in that stifling city, fighting for his life and lacking even the
necessities for his comfort.

Every week since her departure he had written her, even though the
letters grew shorter and blunter as his duties increased. Up until now,
however, he, like every one else, had tried to shield Eleanor from
anything ugly and sordid. He had tried to make light of the situation and
reassure her as to results; but he was determined to do it no longer. It
wasn't right, he told himself angrily, for anybody to go through life
blinded to all the misery and suffering and poverty in the world. He was
going to write her to-night and tell her the whole story and spare her
nothing.

But he did not write. When he reached home Cass had had a turn for the
worse, and there were ice-baths to prepare and other duties to perform
that left him no time for himself.

The next day Edwin and Myrna were sent out to the Randolph Bartletts',
and Rose and Quin cleared the decks for the hard fight ahead. Fan Loomis
came in to help nurse in the day-time, and Quin was on duty through the
long, suffocating August nights.

At the end of the week Cass's condition was so serious that the Bartletts
insisted on keeping the children at the farm. Myrna had proved a cheery,
helpful little companion, and Edwin, while more difficult to handle, was
picking up flesh and color, and was learning to run the car.

Cass's fever dragged on, going down one day only to rise higher the next.
Seven weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks passed, and still no improvement.

Quin, trying to keep up his work at the factory on two or three hours'
sleep out of the twenty-four, grew thin and haggard, and coughed more
than at any time since he had left the hospital. During the long night
vigils he made sporadic efforts to keep up his university work, but he
made little headway.

"Go on to bed, Quin," Rose whispered one night, when she found him asleep
with his head against the bed-post. "You'll be giving out next, and God
knows what I'll do then."

"Not me!" he declared, suppressing a yawn. "You're the one that's done
in. Why don't you stay down?"

"I can't," she murmured, kneeling anxiously beside the unconscious
patient. "He looks worse to me to-night. Do you believe we can pull him
through?"

She had on a faded pink kimono over her thin night-gown, and her heavy
hair was plaited down her back. There were no chestnut puffs over her
ears or pink spots on her cheeks, and her lips looked strange without
their penciled cupid's bow. But to Quin there was something in her drawn
white face and anxious, tender eyes that was more appealing. In their
long siege together he had found a staunch dependence and a power of
sacrifice in the girl that touched him deeply.

"I don't know, Rose," he admitted, reaching over and smoothing her hair;
"but we'll do our darnedest."

At the touch of his hand she reached up and impulsively drew it down to
her cheek, holding it there with her trembling lips against its hard
palm.

The night was intensely hot and still. That afternoon they had moved Cass
into Rose's room in the hope of getting more air from the western
exposure; but only the hot smell of the asphalt and the stifling odor of
car smoke came through the curtainless window. The gas-jet, turned very
low, threw distorted shadows on the bureau with its medley of toilet
articles and medicine bottles. Through the open door of the closet could
be seen Rose's personal belongings; under the table were a pair of
high-heeled slippers; and two white stockings made white streaks across
the window-sill.

Quin sat by Cass's bedside, with his hand clasped to Rose's cheek, and
fought a battle that had been raging within him for days. Without being
in the least in love with Rose, he wanted desperately to take her in his
arms and comfort her. They were both so tired, so miserable, so
desperately afraid of that shadowy presence that hovered over Cass. They
were practically alone in the house, accountable to no one, and drawn
together by an overwhelming anxiety. In Rose's state of emotional tension
she was responsive to his every look and gesture. He had but to hold out
his arms and she would sink into them.

Again and again his eyes traveled from her bright tumbled head to Cass's
flushed face, with its absurd round nose and eyes that could no longer
keep watch over a pleasure-loving sister. What would happen if Cass
should die? Who would take care of her and the children, helpless and
penniless, with only Papa Claude and his visions to stand between them
and the world? A great wave of sympathy rushed over him for the girl
kneeling there with her face buried in the bed-clothes. She had asked so
little of life--just a few good times to offset the drudgery, just an
outlet for the ocean of love that was dammed up in her small body. Love
was the only thing she cared about; it was the only thing that mattered
in life. Cass never understood her, but Quin understood her. He was like
that himself. The blood was pounding through his veins too, a terrible
urgence was impelling him toward her. Why shouldn't they throw discretion
to the winds and answer the call?

Then his mind did a curious thing. It brought up out of the sub-conscious
a question that Eleanor Bartlett had once asked him: "Do you think a
person has a right to go ahead and do what he wants, regardless of
consequences?" He saw her face, moonlit and earnest, turned up to his,
and he heard himself answering her: "That depends on whether he wants the
right thing."

Rose stirred, and he withdrew his hand and stood up.

"See here, young lady," he said with authority; "I'll give you just two
minutes to clear out of here! No, I don't want you to leave your door
open; I'll call you if there's any change."

"But, Quin, I don't want to be alone--I want to be with you." Her eyes
were full of frank appeal, and her lips trembling.

"You are too sleepy to know what you want," he said. "Up with you--not
another word. You'll feel better to-morrow. Good-night." And with a
little push he put her out of the room and closed the door.

                              CHAPTER 20

Quin stood under the big car-shed at the Union Depot, and for the sixth
time in ten minutes consulted the watch that was the pride of his life.
He had been waiting for half an hour, not because the train was late, but
because he proposed to be on the spot if by any happy chance it should
arrive ahead of schedule time. The week before he had received a picture
post-card on whose narrow margin were scrawled the meager lines:

    So glad Cass is up again. Rose says you've been a brick. Home on
    Sept. 2. Hope to see you soon. E. M. B.

It was the only communication he had had from Eleanor since they sat on
the stile in the starlight at Valley Mead three months before. To be
sure, in her infrequent letters to Rose she had always added, "Give my
love to Quinby Graham," and once she said: "Tell him I've been meaning to
write to him all summer." Notwithstanding the fact that Quin had waited
in vain for that letter for twelve consecutive weeks, that he had passed
through every phase of indignation, jealousy, and consuming fear that can
assail a young and undisciplined lover, he nevertheless watched for the
incoming train with a rapture undimmed by disturbing reflections. The
mere fact that every moment the distance was lessening between him and
Eleanor, that within the hour he should see her, hear her, feel the clasp
of her hand, was sufficient to send his spirits soaring into sunny spaces
of confidence far above the clouds of doubt.

"Hello, Quinby; what are you doing here?" asked a voice behind him; and
turning he saw the long, oval face and lady-like figure of Mr. Chester.

"Same thing you are," said Quin, grinning sympathetically. "Only if I was
in your shoes I'd be walking the tracks to meet the train."

Mr. Chester shook his head and smiled primly.

"When you have waited twenty years for a young lady, twenty minutes more
or less do not matter."

"They would to me!" Quin declared emphatically. "When is the wedding to
be?"

"On the fourteenth. And that reminds me"--Mr. Chester ran his arm
confidentially through Quin's and tried to catch step. "I want to ask a
favor of you."

A favor to Quin meant anything from twenty-five cents to twenty-five
dollars, and the fact that Mr. Chester should come to him flattered and
embarrassed him at the same time.

"What's mine is yours," he said magnanimously.

"No, you don't understand," said Mr. Chester. "You see, not being a club
man or a society man, I have in a way dropped out of things. I have
comparatively few friends, and unfortunately they are not in a set
personally known to Madam Bartlett. Miss Enid and I thought that it might
solve the difficulty, and avoid complications, if you would agree to
serve as my best man."

"Why, I'd be willing to serve as the preacher to see you and Miss Enid
get married," said Quin heartily. Then his thoughts flew after his
departed Tuxedo and the gorgeous wing-toed pumps. "What'll I have to
wear?"

"It is to be a noon affair," reassured Mr. Chester. "Simple morning coat,
you know, and light-gray tie."

Quin's ideas concerning a morning coat were extremely vague, and the
possibility of his procuring one vaguer still; but the occasion was too
portentous to admit of hesitation. He and Mr. Chester continued their
walk to the far end of the shed, and then stood looking down at the coal
cars being loaded from the yards.

"White gloves, I suppose?" observed Quin.

"Pearl gray, with very narrow stitching. I think that's better taste,
don't you?"

"Sure," agreed Quin. "Flower in the buttonhole, or anything like that?"

While this all-important detail was being decided, a clanging bell and
the hiss of an engine announced the incoming train. Before the two
waiting cavaliers could reach the gate, Eleanor Bartlett came through,
laden with wraps and umbrellas.

"I like the way you meet us," she called out. "For mercy sake, help me."
And she deposited her burden in Quin's outstretched arms. Then, as Mr.
Chester strode past them with flying coat-tails in quest of Miss Enid,
she burst out laughing.

"Say, you are looking great," said Quin, with devouring eyes, as he
surveyed her over the top of his impedimenta.

"It's more than you are." She scanned his face in dismay. "Have you been
sick?"

"No, indeed. Never felt better."

"I know--it was nursing Cass that did it. Rose wrote me all about it. If
you don't look better right away, I shall make you go straight to bed and
I'll come feed you chicken soup."

"My fever's rising this minute!" cried Quin, "I believe I've got a chill.
Send for the ambulance!"

"Not till after the wedding. I'll have you know I am to be Aunt Enid's
bridesmaid."

"You've got nothing on me," said Quin, "I'm the best man!"

This struck them both as being so excruciatingly funny that they did not
see the approaching cavalcade, with Madam walking slowly at its head,
until Quin heard his name called.

"Oh, dear," said Eleanor, "there they come. And I've got a thousand
questions to ask you and a million things to tell you."

"Come here, young man, and see me walk!" was Madam's greeting. "Do I look
like a cripple? Leg off at the knee, crutches for life? Bah! We fooled
them, didn't we?"

Quin made a tremendous fuss over the old lady. He also threw the aunties
into pleased confusion by pretending that he was going to kiss them, and
occasioned no end of laughter and good-natured banter by his incessant
teasing of Mr. Chester. He was in that state of effervescence that
demanded an immediate outlet.

Madam found him so amusing that she promptly detailed him as her special
escort.

"Eleanor can look after the baggage," she said, "and Isobel can look
after Eleanor. The turtle-doves can take a taxi." And she closed her
strong old fingers around Quin's wrist and pulled him forward.

He shot an appealing glance over his shoulder at Eleanor, who shook her
head in exasperation; then he obediently conducted Madam to her carriage
and scrambled in beside her.

"Now," she said, when he had got a cushion at her back and a stool under
her foot, "tell me: where's Ranny--drunk as usual?"

"No, siree!" said Quin proudly. "Sober as usual. He hasn't touched a drop
since you went away."

She looked at him incredulously.

"Are you lying?"

"I am not."

Her hard, suspicious old face began to twitch and her eyelids reddened.

"This is your doing," she said gruffly. "You've put more backbone into
him than all the doctors together."

"That's not all I've done," said Quin. "What are you going to say when I
tell you I've sold him a farm?"

"A farm? You've got no farm; and he had no money to buy it, if you had."

"That's all right. He has had a farm for three months. You ought to see
him--up at six o'clock every morning looking after things, and so keen
about getting back to it in the evening that he never thinks about going
to the club or staying in town."

"What's all this nonsense you are talking?"

"It's not nonsense. He's bought a little place out near Anchordale. They
are living there."

"And they did this without consulting me!" Madam's eyes blazed. "Why, he
is no more capable of running a farm than a ten-year-old child! I have
fought it for years. He knew perfectly well if he told me I'd stop it
instantly. He will appeal to me to help out within six months, you'll
see! I sha'n't do it! I'll show my children if they can do without me
that I can go without them."

She was working herself into a fine rage. The aigrette on her bonnet
quivered, and the black velvet band about her neck was getting so tight
that it looked as if it couldn't stand the strain much longer.

"Why didn't he write me?" she stormed. "Am I too old and decrepit to be
consulted any more? Is he going to follow Enid's high-handed way of
deciding things without the slightest reference to my wishes?"

"I expect he is," said Quin cheerfully. "You see, you can't stiffen a
fellow's backbone, as you call it, for one thing and not another. When he
found out he could stop drinking, he decided he could do other things as
well. He's started a chicken farm."

Madam groaned: "Of course. I never knew a fool that sooner or later
didn't gravitate to chickens. He will get an incubator next."

"He has two already. He and Mrs. Ranny are studying out the whole
business scientifically."

"And I suppose they've got a rabbit hutch, and a monkey, and some white
mice?"

"Not quite. But they've got a nice place. Want to go out with me next
Saturday and see 'em?"

"I do not. I'm not interested in menageries. I never expect to cross the
threshold."

Quin pulled up the cape that had slipped from her shoulder, and adjusted
it carefully.

"When Mr. Ranny comes in to see you," he said, "I hope you won't ball him
out right away. He's awful keen on this stunt, you know. It sort of takes
the place of the things he has given up."

Madam glared straight ahead of her for a few moments, then she said
curtly:

"I'll not mention it until he does."

"Oh, but I _want_ you to. He's as nervous as a witch about how you are
going to take it. You see, he thinks more of your opinion than he does of
anybody's, and he wants your approval. If you could jump right in and say
you think it's a bully idea, and that you are coming out to see what he
has done, and----"

"Do you want me to lie?" Madam demanded fiercely.

"No," said Quin, laughing; "I am trying to warm you up to the project
now, so you won't have to lie." Then, seeing her face relax a little, he
leaned toward her and said in his most persuasive tone:

"See here, now! I did my best to straighten Mr. Ranny out. He's making
the fight of his life to keep straight. It's up to you to stand by us.
You don't want to pitch the fat back in the fire, do you?"

They had reached the big house on Third Avenue, and the carriage was
slowing up at the curbing. Quin, receiving no answer to his question,
carefully helped Madam up the steps and into the house, where black
Hannah was waiting to receive her.

"You can't come in," said Madam gruffly. "I am tired. I will see you some
other time."

"All right," said Quin. "What time shall I come Saturday afternoon?"

"Saturday afternoon? Why then?"

"To go out to Mr. Ranny's farm."

For an instant they measured glances; then Quin began to laugh--a
confident, boyish laugh full of teasing affection.

"Come on," he coaxed, "be a good scout. Let's give 'em the surprise of
their lives."

"You rascal, you!" she said, hitting at him with her cane. "I believe you
are at the bottom of all this. Mind, I promise you nothing."

"You don't have to," he called back. "I can trust you. I'll be here at
three!"

He arrived on Saturday an hour early in the hope of seeing Eleanor, and
was gloriously rewarded by thirty minutes alone with her in the big dark
drawing-room. All the way up from the factory he had thought of the
things he wanted to tell her--all the Martel news, the progress of
affairs at Valley Mead, the fact that he had won his first-term
certificate at the university, and above all about his promotion at
Bartlett & Bangs. But Eleanor gave him no chance to tell her anything.
She was like a dammed-up stream that suddenly finds an outlet. Into
Quin's sympathetic ears she poured her own troubles, talking with her
hands and her eyes as well as her lips, exaggerating, dramatizing,
laughing one minute, half crying the next.

The summer, it seemed, had been one long series of clashes with her
grandmother. She hadn't enjoyed one day of it, she assured him; that is,
not a _whole_ day, for of course there were some gorgeous times in
between. Her friends had not been welcome at the house, and one (whom
Quin devoutly hoped was Mr. Phipps) had been openly insulted. She had not
been allowed to take part in the play given at the club-house, when it
had been planned with her especially in mind for the leading rôle. She
had even been forbidden to go to the last boathouse dance, because it was
a moonlight affair, and grandmother had never heard of such a thing as
dancing without lights.

"She has spent the entire summer nagging at me," Eleanor concluded. "I
couldn't do a thing to please her. If I stayed in she wanted me to go
out; if I went out she thought I ought to stay in. If I put on one dress
she invariably made me change it for another. And as for being late to
meals, why, each time it happened you would have thought I'd broken the
ten commandments."

"Couldn't you have pushed up the stroke and got there on time?" asked
Quin, whose army training made him inclined to sympathize with Madam at
this point.

"No, I could not. I am always late. It's a Martel trait--that's why it
infuriates grandmother. But it wasn't any of these things I've been
telling you that caused the real trouble. It was her constant
interference in my private affairs. I am simply sick of being dictated to
about my choice of friends."

"You mean Mr. Phipps?"

She looked at him quickly. "How did you know?"

"Mrs. Ranny told me he was up there, and I guessed there was a shindy."

"I should say there was--for the entire three days he was there! If he
hadn't been big enough to rise above it and ignore grandmother, she would
have succeeded in breaking up one of the most beautiful friendships of my
life."

Quin absently twisted a corner of the corpulent sofa cushion which he
held in his lap, before he asked cautiously:

"What is it you like so much in him. Miss Nell?"

Eleanor curled her feet under her on the sofa, and launched forth on a
favorite theme:

"Well, to begin with, he's the most cosmopolitan man I ever met."

"Cosmopolitan? How do you mean?"

"Awfully sophisticated. A sort of citizen of the world, you know."

"You mean he's traveled a lot, knocked around in queer places, like me?"

"Oh, no; it isn't that. As a matter of fact, he has never been out of
this country. But I mean that, wherever he'd go, he would be at home."

"Yes," Quin admitted, with a grim smile; "that's where he was most of the
time when he was in the army. What else do you like about him?"

"I sha'n't tell you. You are prejudiced, like all the rest. He says that
only an artist can understand an artist."

"Meaning, I suppose, that he understands you?"

"Yes; and I believe I understand him. Of course I don't agree with him in
all his ideas. But then, I've been brought up in such a narrow way that I
know I am frightfully conventional. He is awfully advanced, you know. Why
don't you like him, Quin?"

Numerous concrete and very emphatic reasons sprang to Quin's lips. He
would have liked nothing better than to answer her question fully and
finally; but instead he only smiled at her and said:

"Why, I guess the main reason is because you do."

Eleanor looked at him dubiously: "No," she said; "it's something besides
that. The family have probably filled your ears with silly gossip. Mr.
Phipps _was_ wild at one time--he told me all about it. But that's
ancient history; you can take my word for it."

Quin would have taken her word for almost anything when she looked at him
with such star-eyed earnestness, but he was obliged to make an exception
in the present instance.

"He's nothing in my young life," he said indifferently. "What I want to
know is whether you are home to stay?"

Eleanor glanced at the door, listened, then she said:

"I don't know yet. You see, Papa Claude is to be in New York this winter,
finishing his play. He says if I will come on he will put me in the
Kendall School of Expression and see that I get the right start. It's the
chance of a life-time, and I'm simply wild to go."

"And Queen Vic won't hear of it?"

"Not for a second. She knows perfectly well that I can go on the stage
the day I am twenty-one, yet through sheer obstinacy she refuses to
advance me a penny to do as I like with before the 20th of next July."

"She don't do it for meanness," Quin ventured. "She'd give you all she
had if it came to a showdown. But none of 'em realize you are grown up;
they are afraid to turn you loose."

"Well, I've stood it as long as I intend to. I made up my mind that I
would stick it out until after Aunt Enid's wedding. It nearly breaks my
heart to do anything to hurt her and Aunt Isobel; but even they are
beginning to rebel against grandmother's tyranny."

"What do you mean to do?" asked Quin, with a sudden sinking of the heart.

"I am not sure yet; I haven't quite made up my mind. But I am not going
to stay here. I am too unhappy, Quin, and with Aunt Enid gone----" Her
voice broke, and as she caught her lip between her small white teeth she
stared ahead of her with tragic eyes.

Quin laid his arm along the sofa, as close to her shoulders as he dared,
and looked at her in dumb sympathy.

"Don't you think you might try a different tack with the old lady?" he
ventured presently. "Even a porcupine likes to have its head scratched,
and I think sometimes she's kind of hungry for somebody to cotton up to
her a bit. Don't you think you might----"

"Who left that front door open?" broke in a harsh, peremptory voice from
the landing. "I don't care _who_ opened it--I want it shut, and kept
shut. Where's Quinby Graham? I thought you said he was waiting."

Quin rose precipitately and made a dash for the hall, while Eleanor
discreetly disappeared through a rear door.

"Well," said Madam grimly, pulling on her gloves, "it is a novel
experience to find a young person who has a respect for other people's
time."

                              CHAPTER 21

For the next two weeks Eleanor made a heroic effort to follow Quin's
advice and be nice to Madam. She wanted, with all her heart, to gain her
point peacefully, and she also wanted Quin's approval of what she was
doing. In spite of his obvious adoration, she frequently detected a note
of criticism in his voice, that, while it piqued her, also stirred her
conscience and made her see things in a new and disturbing light. For the
first time, she began to wonder if she could be partly to blame for the
friction that always existed between herself and her grandmother. She
certainly had taken an unholy joy in flaunting her Martel characteristics
in the old lady's face. It was not that she preferred to identify herself
with her mother's family rather than with her father's. The Martel
shiftlessness and visionary improvidence were quite as intolerable to her
as the iron-clad conventions of the Bartletts. She could take correction
from Aunt Isobel and Aunt Enid, but there was something in her
grandmother's caustic comments that made her tingle with instant
opposition, as a delicate vase will shiver at the sound of its own
vibration.

During the days before the wedding she surprised herself by her docility
and acquiescence in all that was proposed for her. She even accepted
without demur the white swiss and blue ribbons that a week before she had
considered entirely too infantile for an adult maid of honor. This
particular exhibition of virtue was due to the exemplary behavior of the
bride herself. Miss Enid had longed for the regulation white satin, tulle
veil, and orange blossoms; but Madam had promptly cited the case of the
old maid who waited so long to marry that her orange blossoms turned to
oranges.

Miss Enid was married in a sober traveling dress, and carried a
prayer-book. She and Mr. Chester stood in front of the drawing-room
mantel, where twenty years before Madam had expressed her opinion
concerning sentimental young fools who thought they could live on fifteen
dollars a week.

The budding romance, snatched ruthlessly up and flung into the dust-heap
of common sense, had lain dormant all these years, until Quinby Graham
had stumbled upon its dried old roots, and planted them once again in the
garden of dreams.

Why is it that we will breathlessly follow the callowest youth and the
silliest maiden through the most intricate labyrinth of love, never
losing interest until they drop safely into one another's arms, and yet
when two seasoned, mellowed human beings tried by life and found worthy
of the prize of love, dare lift a sentimental lid or sigh a word of
romance, we straightway howl with derision?

It was not until Eleanor stood beside the elderly bride that the affair
ceased to be funny to her. For the first time, she saw something pathetic
and beautiful in the permanence of a love that, starved and thwarted and
blasted by ridicule, could survive the years and make two faded,
middle-aged people like Aunt Enid and Mr. Chester eager to drain the
dregs of life together, when they had been denied the good red wine.

Her eyes wandered from their worn, elated faces to the rows of solemn
figures behind them. Madam, as usual, dominated the scene. Her portrait
gazed in portentously from the hall; her marble bust gleamed from a
distant corner; and she herself, the most resplendent person present, sat
in a chair of state placed like a proscenium-box, and critically observed
the performance.

"If she only _wouldn't_ curl her lip like that!" thought Eleanor
shudderingly; then she remembered her resolution and looked at Quin.

He too was looking preternaturally solemn, and his lips were moving
softly in unison with Mr. Chester's. If Eleanor could have heard those
inaudible responses she would have been startled by the words: "I,
Quinby, take thee, Eleanor." But she only observed that he was lost in a
day-dream, and that she had never seen him look so nice.

Indeed, he was a very different-looking person from the boy that six
months ago had mortified her by his appearance at her Easter party in
"the classiest coat in the market." The propriety of his garments made
her suspect that Uncle Ranny had had a hand in their selection.

"And I like the way he's got his hair slicked back," she thought. "I
wonder how he ever managed it?"

After the wedding breakfast, which was a lavish one, and the departure of
the bride and groom, for California, where they were to make their future
home, Madam summoned Eleanor.

"There's no use in you and Quin Graham staying here with all these
fossils," she said, lowering her voice. "People hate to go home from a
wedding almost as much as they do from a funeral! You two take this and
go to a matinée."

This unexpected concession to Eleanor's weakness touched her deeply. She
flew into the hall to tell Quin, and then rushed upstairs to change her
dress.

"I believe the scheme is working!" she said joyously, as she and Quin sat
in the theater waiting for the curtain to rise. "Grandmother has been
peaches and cream to me all week. This morning she capped the climax by
giving me a check for a hundred dollars to buy a gold mesh bag."

"A _what!_" cried Quin, aghast.

"A mesh bag. But I am not going to get it. I sent the check to Rose. It
has nearly killed me not to have a penny to send them all summer, and
this came just in time. Have you heard about Myrna?"

"Being asked to spend the winter at Mrs. Ranny's? I should say I have!
She's the happiest kid alive."

"And grandmother has even stood for that! It's a perfect scream to hear
her bragging about 'my son's farm.' She will be talking about 'my
daughter's husband' next."

"Queen Vic's all right," Quin declared stoutly. "Her only trouble is that
she's been trying to play baseball by herself; she's got to learn
team-work."

The play happened to be "The Better 'Ole"; and from the moment the
curtain rose Eleanor was oblivious to everything but the humor and pathos
and glory of the story. She followed with ready tears and smiles the
adventures of the three Tommies; she thrilled to the sentimental songs
beside the stage camp fire; she laughed at the antics of the incomparable
Corporal Bill. It was not until the second act that she became conscious
of the queer behavior of her companion.

Quin sat hunched up in his wedding suit, his jaw set like a vise, staring
solemnly into space with an expression she had never seen in his face
before. He seemed to have forgotten where he was and whom he was with.
His hand had crushed the program into a ball, and his breath came short,
as it always did when he was excited or over-exerted.

Eleanor, whose emotions up to now had been pleasantly and superficially
stirred, suddenly saw the play from a new angle. With quick imagination
she visualized the great reality of which all this was but a clever sham.
She saw Quin passing through it all, not to the thunder of stage shrapnel
and the glare of a red spot-light, but in the life-and-death struggle of
those eighteen months in the trenches. Before she knew it, she too was
gazing absently into space, shaken with the profound realization that
here beside her, his shoulder touching hers, was one who had lived more
in a day than she had ever lived in a life-time.

They said little during the last intermission, and the silence brought
them closer together than any words could have done.

"It takes a fellow back--all this," Quin roused himself to say in
half-apology.

"I know," said Eleanor.

They walked home in the autumn twilight in that exalted, romantic mood in
which a good play leaves one. Now that the tension was over, it was quite
possible to prolong the enjoyment by discussing the strong and weak
points of the performance. Eleanor was surprised to find that Quin, while
ignorant of the meaning of the word technic nevertheless had decided and
worth-while opinions about every detail, and that his comments were often
startlingly pertinent.

They reached the Bartletts' before they knew it, and Quin sighed
ruefully:

"I wish Miss Enid and Mr. Chester could get married every Wednesday! When
can I see you again?"

"Some time soon."

"To-morrow night?"

"I am afraid that's too soon."

"Friday?"

"No; I am going to a dance at the Country Club Friday night."

Still he lingered disconsolately on the lower step, unable to tear
himself away.

"Do you know," he said, gaining time by presenting a grievance, "you
never have danced with me but twice in your life?"

She looked at him dreamily.

"The funny thing is that I remember those two dances better than any I've
ever had with anybody else."

He came up the steps two at a time.

"What do you mean by that?" he demanded. "Are you joshing me?"

"No, honest. That New Year's eve with the blizzard raging outside, and
that bright crowded hall, and all you boys just home from France. Do you
remember the big blue parrots that swung in hoops from the chandeliers?
And that wonderful saxophone and the big bass drum!"

"Then it isn't _me_ that you remember? Just a darned old parrot hanging
on a hoop, and a saxophone and a drum!"

"You silly! Of course it's you too! I remember every single thing you
told me, and how terribly thrilled I was. This afternoon brought it all
back. I shall never forget this, either. Not as long as I live!"

She started to put out her hand; but, seeing the look in Quin's eyes, she
reconsidered and opened the door instead.

"So long," she said casually. "I'll probably see you sometime next week.
In the meanwhile I'll be good to granny!"

                              CHAPTER 22

When Eleanor reached the Country Club on Friday night, she found a box of
flowers waiting for her in the dressing-room. It was the second box she
had received that day. The first bore the conspicuous label, "Wear-Well
Shoes," and contained a bunch of wild evening primroses wrapped in wet
moss. With this more sophisticated floral offering was a sealed note
which she opened eagerly:

    _Mademoiselle Beaux Yeux_--[she read]:

    Save all the dances after the intermission for me. I will reach L. at
    nine-thirty, get out to the club for a couple of hours with you, and
    catch the midnight express back to Chicago. Pin my blossoms close to
    your heart, and bid it heed what they whisper.

    H. P.

Eleanor read the note twice, conscious of the fact that a dozen envious
eyes were watching her. She considered this quite the most romantic thing
that had happened to her. For a man like Mr. Phipps to travel sixteen
hours out of the twenty-four just to dance with her was a triumph indeed.
It made her think of her old friend Joseph, in the Bret Harte poem, who

    Swam the Elk's creek and all that,
    Just to dance with old Folingsbee's daughter,
    The Lily of Poverty Flat.

Not that Eleanor felt in the least humble. She had never felt so proud in
her life as she smiled a little superior smile and slipped the note in
her bosom.

"Not orchids!" exclaimed Kitty Mason, poking an inquisitive finger under
the waxed paper.

"Why not?" Eleanor asked nonchalantly. "They are my favorite flowers."

"But I thought the orchid king was in Chicago?"

"He is--that is, he was. He's probably on the train now. I have just had
a note saying he was running down for the dance and would go back
to-night."

The news had the desired effect. Six noses, which were being vigorously
powdered, were neglected while their owners burst forth in a chorus of
exclamations sufficiently charged with envious admiration to satisfy the
most rapacious débutante.

"I should think you'd be perfectly paralyzed trying to think of things to
talk to him about," said little Bessie Meed, who had not yet put her hair
up. "Older men scare me stiff."

"They don't me," declared Lou Pierce; "they make me tired. Sitting out
dances, and holding hands, and talking high-brow. When I come to a dance
I want to dance. Give me Johnnie Rawlings or Pink Bailey and a good old
jazz."

Eleanor pinned on her orchids and moved away. The girls seemed incredibly
young and noisy and crass. Less than six months ago she, too, was romping
through the dances with Jimmy and Pink, and imagining that a fox-trot
divided between ten partners constituted the height of enjoyment. Mr.
Phipps had told her in the summer that she was changing. "The little
butterfly is emerging from her chrysalis," was the poetic way he had
phrased it, with an accompanying look that spoke volumes.

Once on the dance floor, however, she forgot her superior mood and
enjoyed herself inordinately until supper-time. Just as she and Pink were
starting for the refreshment room, she caught sight of a familiar
graceful figure, standing apart from the crowd, watching her with level,
penetrating eyes.

"Pink, I forgot!" she said hastily; "I'm engaged for supper. I'll see you
later." And without further apology she slipped through the throng and
joined Harold.

"Let's get out of this," he said, lightly touching her bare arm and
piloting her toward the porch.

"But don't you want any supper?" asked Eleanor, amazed.

"Not when I have you," whispered Harold.

Eleanor gave a regretful glance at a mammoth tray of sandwiches being
passed, then allowed herself to be drawn out through the French window
into the cool darkness of the wide veranda.

"Let's sit in that car down by the first tee," Harold suggested. "It's
only a step."

Eleanor hesitated. One of the ten social commandments imposed upon her
was that she was never to leave the porch at a Country Club dance. That
the porch edge should be regarded as the limit of propriety had always
seemed to her the height of absurdity; but so far she had obeyed the
family and confined her flirtations to shadowy corners and dim nooks
under bending palms.

"What's the trouble?" Harold inquired solicitously. "The little gold
slippers?"

"No--I don't mind the slippers; but, you see, I'm not supposed to go off
the porch."

"How ridiculous! Of course you are going off the porch. I have only one
hour to stay, and I've something very important to tell you."

"But why can't we sit here?" she insisted, indicating an unoccupied
bench.

"Because those ubiquitous youngsters will be clamoring for you the moment
the music begins. Haven't you had enough noise for one night? Perhaps you
prefer to go inside and be pushed about and eat messy things with your
fingers?"

"Now you are horrid!" Eleanor pouted. "I only thought----"

"You mean you _didn't_ think!" corrected Harold, putting the tip of his
finger under her chin and tilting her face up to his. "You just repeated
what you'd been taught to say. Use your brains, Eleanor. What possible
harm can there be in our quietly sitting out under the light of the
stars, instead of on this crowded piazza with that distracting din going
on inside?"

"Of course there isn't really."

"Well, then, come on"; and he led the way across the strip of dewy lawn
and handed her into the car.

Eleanor experienced a delicious sense of forbidden joy as she sank on the
soft cushions and looked back at the brilliantly lighted club-house. The
knowledge that in many of those other cars parked along the roadway other
couples were cozily twosing, and that not a girl among them but would
have changed places with her, added materially to her enjoyment.

It was not that Harold Phipps was popular. She had to admit that he had
more enemies than friends. But rumors of his wealth, his position, and
his talent, together with his distinguished appearance, had made him the
most sought after officer stationed at the camp. That he should have
swooped down from his eagle flight with Uncle Ranny's sophisticated group
to snatch her out of the pool of youthful minnows was a compliment she
did not forget.

"Well," he said, lazily sinking into his corner of the car and observing
her with satisfaction, "haven't you something pretty to say to me, after
I've come all these miles to hear it?"

Eleanor laughed in embarrassment. It was much easier to say pretty things
in letters than to say them face to face.

"There is one thing that I always have to say to you," she said, "and
that's thank you. These orchids are perfectly sweet, and the candy that
came yesterday----"

"Was also _perfectly_ sweet? Come, Eleanor, let's skip the formalities.
Were you or were you not glad to see me?"

"Why, of course I was."

"Well, you didn't look it. I am not used to having girls treat me as
casually as you do. How much have you missed me?"

"Heaps. How's the play coming on?"

"Marvelously! We've worked out all the main difficulties, and I signed up
this week with a manager."

"Not _really!_ When will it be produced?"

"Sometime in the spring. I go on to New York next month to make the final
arrangements. When do you go?"

"I don't know that I am going. I'm trying my best to get grandmother's
consent."

"You must go anyhow," said Harold. "I want you to have three months at
the Kendall School, and then do you know what I am going to do?"

"What?" she asked with sparkling eagerness.

"I am going to try you out in 'Phantom Love.' You remember you said if I
wrote a part especially for you that nothing in heaven or earth could
prevent your taking it."

"And _have_ you written a part especially for me?"

"I certainly have. A young Southern girl who moves through the play like
a strain of exquisite music. The only trouble is that the rôle promises
to be more appealing than the star's."

"That's the loveliest thing I ever heard of anybody doing!" cried
Eleanor, breathless with gratitude. "Does Papa Claude know?"

"Of course he knows. We worked it out together. I am going to find him a
small apartment, so he can be ready for you when you come. It shouldn't
be later than November the first."

Eleanor wore such a look as Joan of Arc must have worn when she first
heard the heavenly voices. Her shapely bare arms hung limp at her sides,
and her white face, with its contrasting black hair, shone like a
delicate cameo against the darkness.

Harold, leaning forward with elbows on his knees, kept lightly touching
and retouching his mustache.

"In the first act," he continued softly, "I've put you in the Red Cross
Uniform--the little blue and white one, you know, that you used to break
hearts in out at the camp hospital. In the second act you are to be in
riding togs, smart in every detail, something very chic, that will show
your figure to advantage; in the last act I want you exactly as you are
this minute--this soft clingy gold gown, and the gold slippers, and your
hair high and plain like that, with the band of dull gold around it. I
wouldn't change an inch of you, not from your head to your blessed little
feet!"

As he talked Eleanor forgot him completely. She was busy visualizing the
different costumes, even going so far as to see herself slipping through
folds of crimson velvet to take insistent curtain calls. Already in
imagination she was rich and famous, dispensing munificent bounty to the
entire Martel family. Then a disturbing thought pricked her dream and
brought her rudely back to the present. As long as her grandmother
regarded her going to New York as a foolish whim, a passing craze, she
might be wheedled into yielding; but at the first suggestion of a
professional engagement, her opposition would become active and violent,
Eleanor sighed helplessly and looked at Harold.

"What shall I do if grandmother refuses to send me?" she asked
desperately.

"You can let me send you," he said quietly. "It's folly to keep up this
pretense any longer, Eleanor. You love me, don't you?"

"I--I like you," faltered Eleanor, "better than almost anybody. But I am
never going to marry; I don't think I shall ever care for anybody--that
way."

He watched her with an amused practised glance. "We won't talk about it
now," he said lightly. "We will talk instead of your career. You remember
that night at Ran's when you recited for me? I can hear you now saying
those lines:

    'Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won
    I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay.'

For days I was haunted by the beauty and subtlety of your voice, the
unconscious grace of your poses, your little tricks of coquetry, and the
play of your eyebrows."

"Did you really see all that in me the first night?"

"I saw more. I saw that, if taken in time, you were destined to be a
great actress. I swore then and there that you should have your chance,
and that I should be the one to give it to you."

"But----"

"No. Don't answer me now. You are like a little bud that's afraid to open
its petals. Once you get out of this chilling atmosphere of criticism and
opposition, you will burst into glorious bloom."

"But it would mean a terrible break with the family. I don't believe I
can----"

"Yes, you can. I know you better than you know yourself. If Madam
Bartlett persists in refusing to send you to New York, you are going to
be big enough to let me do it."

He was holding her hand now, and talking with unusual earnestness.
Eleanor thought she had never seen a greater exhibition of magnanimity.
That he was willing to give all and ask for nothing, to be patient with
her vacillations, and understand and sympathize with what everybody else
condemned in her, touched her greatly. She turned to him impulsively.

"I'll do whatever you say," she said. "You and Papa Claude go ahead and
make the arrangements, and I promise you I'll come."

Harold Phipps should have left it there; but Eleanor was never more
irresistible than when she was in a yielding mood, and now, when she
lifted starry eyes of gratitude, he tumbled off his pedestal of noble
detachment, and drew her suddenly into his arms.

In an instant her soft mood vanished. She scrambled hastily to her feet
and got out of the car.

"I am going in," she said abruptly. "I'm cold."

Harold laughingly followed. "Cold?" he repeated in his laziest tone. "My
dear girl, you could understudy the North Pole! However, it was my
mistake; I'm sorry. Shall we go in and dance?"

For the next half-hour he and Eleanor were the most observed couple on
the floor. The "ubiquitous youngsters," seeing his air of proprietorship,
forbore to break in, and it was not until the last dance that Pink
Bailey, looking the immature college boy he was, presented himself
apologetically to take Eleanor home.

"Bring your car around, and she will be ready," said Harold loftily. Then
he turned to Eleanor, "I shall expect a letter every day. You must keep
me posted how things are going."

They were standing on the club-house steps now, and she was looking
dreamily off across the golf links.

"Did you hear me?" he said impatiently.

"Oh, I was listening to the whip-poor-wills. They always take me back to
Valley Mead. Write every day? Heavens, no. I hate to write letters."

"But you'll write to me, you little ingrate! I shall send you such nice
letters that you'll have to answer them."

A vagrant breeze, with a hint of autumn, blew Eleanor's scarf across his
shoulder, and he tenderly replaced it about her throat.

"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously.

Eleanor, under cover of the crowd that was surging about them, felt a
sudden access of boldness.

"Not so cold as some people think," she said mischievously; then, without
waiting for further good-by, she sped down the steps and into the waiting
car.

                              CHAPTER 23

Of all the multitudinous ways in which Dan Cupid, Unlimited, does
business, none is more nefarious than his course by correspondence. Once
he has induced two guileless clients to plunge into the traffic of love
letters, the rest is easy. Wild speculation in love stock, false
valuations, hysterical desire to buy in the cheapest and sell in the
dearest market, invariably follow. Before the end of the month Harold
Phipps and Eleanor Bartlett were gambling in the love market with a
recklessness that would have staggered the most hardened old speculator.

Harold, instead of being handicapped by his absence at the most critical
point in his love affair, took advantage of it to exhibit one of his most
brilliant accomplishments. He sent Eleanor a handsome tooled-leather
portfolio to hold his letters, which he wrote on loose-leaf sheets and
mailed unfolded. They were letters that deserved preservation, prose
poems composed with infinite pains and copied with meticulous care. If
the potpourri was at times redolent of the dried flowers of other men's
loves, Eleanor was blissfully unaware of it. When he wrote of the
lonesome October of his most immemorial year, or spoke of her pilgrim
soul coming to him at midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, she
thrilled with admiration for his genius.

Such literary masterpieces deserved adequate answers, and she found
herself trying to make up in quantity what she lacked in quality. His
letters always began, "Dearest Héloïse," or "Mélisande," or "Baucis," or
"Isolde"; and, rather than acknowledge her ignorance of these classic
allusions, she looked them up and sent her answers to "Dear Abélard," or
"Pelléas," or "Philemon," or "Tristan," as the case demanded. She indited
her missives with a dainty gold pen engraved with an orchid, which Harold
had requested her never to profane by secular use.

The correspondence, while throbbing with emotion, was not by any means
devoid of practical details. Harold lost no opportunity of urging Eleanor
to remain firm in her resolve to go to New York. It would be sheer folly,
he pointed out, to give up the chance of a professional début, a chance
that might not come again in years. He pointed out that her grandfather
had changed all his plans on the strength of her coming, and would be
utterly heartbroken if she failed to keep her promise. He delicately
intimated that her failure to take the part he had so laboriously written
for her might seal the fate of "Phantom Love" and prove the downfall of
both its creators.

His conclusion to all these specious arguments was that the only way out
of the tangle was for her to consent to a nominal engagement to him that
would bind her to nothing, and yet would give him the right to send her
to New York if Madam Bartlett refused to do so. In answer to Eleanor's
doubts and misgivings, he assured her in polyphonic prose that he knew
her far better than she knew herself, and that he would be "content to
wait at the feet of little Galatea, asking nothing, giving all, until the
happy day when she should wake to life and love and the consciousness
that she was wholly and happily his."

And Galatea read his letters with increasing ardor and slept with them
under her pillow. It was all so secret and romantic, this glorious
adventure rushing to fulfilment, under the prosy surface of everyday
life. Of course she did not want to be married--not for ages and ages;
but to be engaged, to be indefinitely adored by a consummate lover like
Harold Phipps, who so beautifully shared her ambition, was an exciting
and tempting proposition. Like most girls of her type, when her personal
concerns became too complex for reason, she abandoned herself to impulse.
She merely shut her eyes and allowed herself to drift toward a
destination that was not of her choosing. Like a peripatetic Sleeping
Beauty, she moved through the days in a sort of trance, waiting
liberation from her thraldom, but fearing to put her fate to the test by
laying the matter squarely and finally before her grandmother.

It was easy enough to drop out of her old round of festivities. She had
been away all summer, and new groups had formed with which she took no
trouble to ally herself. Her friends seemed inordinately young and
foolish. She wondered how she had ever endured the trivial chatter of
Kitty Mason and the school-boy antics of Pink Bailey and Johnnie
Rawlings. After declining half a dozen invitations she was left in peace,
free to devote all her time to composing her letters, to poring over
plays and books about the theater, or to sitting listless absorbed in
day-dreams.

The one old friend who refused to be disposed of was Quinby Graham. On
one pretext or another he managed to come to the house almost every day,
and he seldom left it without managing to see her. Sometimes when she was
in the most arduous throes of composition, the maid would come to her
door and say: "Mr. Quin's downstairs, and he says can you come to the
steps a minute--he's got something to show you?" Or Miss Isobel would
pause on the threshold to say: "Quinby is looking for you, Eleanor. I
think it is something about a new tire for your automobile."

And Eleanor would impatiently thrust her letter into a desk drawer and go
downstairs, where she would invariably get so interested in what Quin had
to say to her or to show her that she would forget to come up again.

Sometimes they went out to Valley Mead together for week-ends. On those
days Eleanor not only failed to write to Harold, but also failed to think
about him. The excitement of seeing what new wonders had been wrought
since the last visit, of scouring the woods for nuts and berries, of
going on all-day picnics to a neighboring hill-top, made her quite forget
her castles in the air. She descended from the clouds of art and under
Quin's tutelage learned to fry chops and bacon and cook eggs in the open.
She got her face and hands smudged and her hair tumbled, and she forgot
all about enunciating clearly and holding her poses. So abandoned was she
to what Harold called her "bourgeois mood" that she was conscious of
nothing but the sheer joy of living.

Often when she and Quin were alone together, she longed to take him into
her confidence. She was desperately in need of counsel, and his level
head and clear judgments had solved more than one problem for her. But
she realized that, in spite of the heroic effort he was making to keep
within bounds, he was nevertheless liable to overflow into sentiment with
the slightest encouragement. Confession of her proposed flight, moreover,
involved an explanation of her relation to Harold Phipps, and upon that
point Quin could not be counted to sympathize.

With the first of November came a letter that brought matters to a
crisis. Claude Martel wrote that he must know immediately the date of her
arrival in New York, since the place he had bespoken for her at the
Kendall School of Expression could no longer be held open; he must also
give a definite answer about the apartment.

Eleanor received the letter one Saturday as she was starting to a tea.
All afternoon she listened to the local chatter about her as a lark
poised for flight might listen to the twittering of house sparrows. Her
mind was in a ferment of elation and doubt, of trepidation and joyful
anticipation. The moment she had longed for and yet dreaded was at hand.

Returning across Central Park in the dusk, she rehearsed what she was
going to say to her grandmother. The moment for approaching her had never
seemed more propitious. Ever since she had accepted Quin's advice and
"cottoned up" to the old lady, relations between them had been amazingly
amicable. Her willingness to stay at home in the evening and take Miss
Enid's place as official reader and amanuensis had placed her in high
favor, and Madam, not to be outdone in magnanimity, had allowed her many
privileges.

Now that there seemed some ground for the hope that she might gain her
grandmother's consent to the New York proposition, Eleanor realized how
ardently she wanted it. It was not the money alone, it was her moral
support and approval--hers and Aunt Isobel's. Aunt Enid would understand,
had understood in a way; so would Uncle Ranny and Aunt Flo. As for Quin
Graham----

She heard a cough near by, and turning saw a couple sitting on a bench
half hidden in the heavy shrubbery. Their backs were toward her, and she
noticed that the girl's hand rested on the man's shoulder and that their
heads were bent in intimate conversation. The next instant she recognized
Rose Mattel's hat and the dim outline of Quin's troubled profile.

Turning sharply to the right, she hurried up through the pergola and out
into the avenue. She wondered why she was so unaccountably angry. Rose
and Quin had a perfect right to sit in the square at twilight and talk as
much as they liked. It was not her business, anyhow, she told herself;
she ought to be glad for poor Rose to have any diversion she could get
after being in that hideous store all day. She didn't blame Rose one bit.
But if Quin thought as much of somebody else as he pretended to, she
couldn't see what he would have to say to another girl out here in the
park at twilight, especially a girl that he saw three times a day at
home! Could there be anything between them? She had scorned the idea when
it was once tentatively suggested to her by Harold Phipps. Of
_course_ there couldn't. And yet----

So preoccupied was she with these disturbing reflections that she almost
forgot the real business in hand until she stood on her own doorstep
waiting to be admitted.

"Old Miss says for you to come up to her room the minute you git in,"
Hannah said, with an ominous note in her voice.

"What's the matter, Hannah? Uncle Ranny?"

"Lord, no, honey! Mr. Ranny's behavin' himself like a angel. Hit was
somethin' that come in the mail. Miss Isobel she don't know, and I don't
know; but Old Miss certainly has got it in fer somebody."

Eleanor's new-found confidence promptly deserted her, and she hastily
took stock of her own shortcomings. Of course she was writing daily to
Harold, but the matter of her private correspondence had been threshed
out during the summer and she had emerged battered but victorious. Aside
from that, she could think of no probable cause she had given for
offense.

In the hall she met Miss Isobel.

"Mother has been asking for you, dear," she said in a voice heavy with
premonition. "She's very much upset about something."

Eleanor anxiously mounted the stairs. It was evidently not a propitious
moment to present her case; and yet, Papa Claude must have an answer
within twenty-four hours. At the door of Madam's room she hesitated. Then
she took the small remnant of her courage in both hands and entered.

Madam was sitting at her desk under the crystal chandelier, with a
severity of expression that suggested nothing less than a court martial.
Without speaking she waved Eleanor to a seat, and began searching through
her papers. The light fell full on her high white pompadour and threw the
deep lines about her grim mouth into heavy relief.

"Do you remember," she began ponderously, "a check I gave you the day of
Enid's wedding?"

"Yes, grandmother."

"Well, where is the bag you bought with it?"

Evasion had so often been Eleanor's sole weapon of defense that she
seized it now.

"I--I haven't bought it yet," she faltered; then she added weakly: "I
haven't seen any I particularly cared about."

"You still have the money?"

"Well--I've spent some of it."

"How much?"

"I don't know that I remember exactly."

Madam's lip curled.

"Perhaps I can stimulate your memory," she said, running her fingers
through a bunch of canceled checks. "Here is the check I gave you,
indorsed to Rose Martel."

Eleanor flushed crimson. The imputation of untruthfulness was one to
which she was particularly sensitive. Her fear of her grandmother had
taught her early in life to take refuge in subterfuge, a shelter that she
heartily despised but which she still clung to. In her desire to meet
Rose's imperative need, she had passed her gift on to her, with the
intention of saving enough from her own allowance to get the mesh bag
later. The fact that the canceled check would be returned to her
grandmother had never occurred to her.

"So _that's_ where my money has been going!" cried Madam. "They've
succeeded in working me through you, have they? Just as they succeeded in
working Ranny through Quinby Graham."

"No--no, grandmother! Please listen! They have never asked me for a
penny. But when I found out the terrible time they'd been having, the
children sick all summer and Cass down with typhoid--why, if it hadn't
been for Quin----"

"So they sponged on him too, did they? He's a bigger fool than I gave him
credit for being."

"But they _didn't_ sponge. He is Cass's best friend, and he was glad to
help. He and Rose did all the nursing themselves."

"Yes, I heard about it. In the house alone for six weeks. That doesn't
speak very well for her reputation."

"Grandmother! You've no right to say that! Rose may talk recklessly and
do foolish things, but she wouldn't do anything wrong for the world."

"Well, if she did, she wouldn't be the first member of her family to
compromise a man so that he had to marry her."

"What do you mean?" demanded Eleanor, quivering with indignation.

"That's neither here nor there," said Madam. "There's enough rottenness
in the present without raking up the past. But one thing is certain: if
they ask you for money again----"

"I tell you, they didn't ask me!"

"Not in so many words, perhaps, but they worked on your sympathies. I
know them! As for Claude Martel, he would want nothing better than have
you traveling around in some Punch and Judy show. But I scotched that
nonsense once and for all. As for their bleeding you for money,"--she
rose and crushed the check in her hand,--"I guess I know a way to stop
that."

Eleanor rose too, and faced her. She was very pale now, her anger having
reached a white heat.

"My mother's people may be poor," she said deliberately, "but they aren't
beggars, and at least they've come by what they have honestly."

It was Madam's turn to flinch. A certain famous law-suit in the history
of Bartlett & Bangs had brought out some startling testimony, and the
subject was one to which reference was never allowed in Madam's presence.
At Eleanor's words the whirlwind of her wrath let loose. Her words
hurtled like flying missiles in a cyclone. She lashed herself into a
fury, coming back to Eleanor again and again as the cause of all her
trouble.

"I tried giving you your head," she raged in conclusion; "I let you work
through that crazy stage fever; I gave in about that man Phipps coming up
to Maine, in the hope that you'd find out what a fool he is. That wasn't
enough! You had to write to him. Very well, said I; go ahead and write to
him. I flattered myself that you might develop a little sense. But I was
mistaken. You haven't got the judgment of a ten-year-old child. Therefore
I intend to treat you like a child. From this time on you are not to
write to him at all. And you'll get no allowance. I'll buy you what you
need, and you'll account for all the pin-money you spend, down to every
postage stamp. Do you understand?"

Eleanor was by this time at the door, standing with her hand on the knob,
straight, pale, and defiant, but quivering in every limb. She felt as
beaten, bruised, and humiliated as if the violence directed against her
had been physical. A sick longing surged over her for Aunt Enid, into
whose arms she could rush for comfort. But there was no Aunt Enid to turn
to, and it was no use seeking Aunt Isobel, whose sole advice in such a
crisis was to apologize and propitiate.

Catching her breath in a long, sobbing sigh, Eleanor rushed down the
gloomy hall and shut herself in her room. For ten minutes she sat at her
desk, staring grimly at the wall, with her hands gripped in her lap. She
was like a frenzied prisoner, determined to escape but with no
destination in view. Suddenly her eyes fell on an unopened letter on her
blotting-pad. She tore off the envelop and read it twice. For another
five minutes she stared at the wall. Then she seized her pen and dashed
off a note. It took but a few minutes after that to change her light gown
for a dark one and to fling some things into a suit-case. Just as dinner
was being announced, she slipped down the back stairs and out of the side
door into the somber dusk of the November evening.

                              CHAPTER 24

Quin's life at the factory these past three weeks had been full of new
and engrossing business complications. Mr. Bangs seemed bent upon trying
him out in various departments, each change bringing new and distracting
duties. Just what was the object of the proceeding Quin had no idea; but
he realized that he was being singled out and experimented with, and he
applied to each new task the accumulated knowledge and experience of
those that had gone before. It was all very exciting and gratifying to a
person possessed of an inordinate ambition to have a worthy shrine ready
the moment his goddess evinced the slightest willingness to occupy it.

"Old Iron Jaw's got his optic on you for something," said Miss Leaks, the
stenographer. "Maybe he wants you to pussy-foot around in Shields' shoes
and do his dirty work for him."

"Well, he's got another guess coming," said Quin; but her remark
disturbed him. Of course it was no concern of his how the firm did
business, but more than once he had been called upon to negotiate some
delicate matter that was not at all to his liking.

"See here, young man," Mr. Bangs said upon one of these occasions, "I am
not paying you for advice. You are here to carry out my orders and to
make no comments."

"That's all right," Quin agreed good-naturedly; "but I got a conscience
that was trained to stand on its hind legs and bark at a lie."

"The quicker you muzzle it the better," said Mr. Bangs. "You can't do
business these days by the Golden Rule."

On the Saturday when Eleanor saw Quin in the park with Rose Martel, the
factory had been in the throes of one of its most violent upheavals. Some
weeks before the old steam engine had been replaced by an expensive
electric drive. There had been much interest manifested in the
installation of the modern motor, and Quin, with his natural love of
machinery, had rejoiced that his duties as shipping clerk required him to
be present at the unpacking. He and Dirk, the foreman, never tired of
discussing the perfection of each particular feature. But a few days
after the departure of the installation foreman, the new motor burnt out,
necessitating the shutting down of the factory and causing much
inconvenience.

Dirk was beside himself with rage. He declared that something heavy had
been dropped upon the armature winding, and he blamed every one who could
have been responsible, and some who could not. In the midst of his tirade
he was summoned to the office, where he was closeted for more than an
hour with Mr. Bangs and Mr. Shields. When he emerged, it was with the
avowed belief that the armature had been defective when received. This
sudden change of front, taken in connection with the fact that the third
payment was due on the motor in less than sixty days, set every tongue
wagging.

Quin was in no way involved in the transaction; but, as usual, he had an
emphatic opinion, which he did not hesitate to express.

"I don't know what's got into Dirk!" he said indignantly to Mr. Shields,
the traffic manager, as they left the office together. "He knows the
injury to the armature was done in our shop and that we are responsible
for it."

"I guess Dirk's like the rest of us," said Shields bitterly; "he knows a
lot he can't tell."

"What do you mean? Do you think it was a frame-up?"

"Well, we don't call it that. But when the boss gets in a hole,
somebody's got to pull him out. I'm getting mighty sick of it myself.
Wish to the Lord I could pull up stakes as Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Chester
did."

It was not until they separated that Quin's thoughts left the disturbing
events of the day and flew to something more pleasing. For two weeks now
he had had to content himself with chance interviews with Eleanor, meager
diet for a person with an omnivorous appetite; but to-night there was the
prospect for a long, uninterrupted evening. Since the day of Miss Enid's
wedding he had found her perplexed and absent-minded; but the fact that
she always had a smile for him, and that nothing was seen or heard of
Harold Phipps, sufficed to satisfy him.

When he started across Central Park the sun was just setting, and he
turned off the main path and dropped down on a bench to rest for a
moment. He had acquired a taste for sunsets at a tender age, having
watched them from many a steamer's prow. He knew how the harbor of
Hongkong brimmed like a goblet of red wine, how Fujiyama's snow-capped
peak turned rose, he knew how beautiful the sun could look through a
barrage of fire. But it was of none of these that he thought as he sat on
the park bench, his arms extended along the back, his long legs stretched
out, and his eyes on a distant smokestack. He was thinking of a country
stile and a girl in white and green, in whose limpid eyes he watched the
reflected light of the most wonderful of all his sunsets.

For the third time since leaving the office, he consulted his watch.
Six-thirty! Another hour and a half must be got through before he could
see her.

A rustle of leaves behind him made him look up, but before he could turn
his head two hands were clapped over his eyes. Investigation proved them
to be feminine, and he promptly took them captive.

"It's Rose?" he guessed.

"Let me go!" she laughed; "somebody will see you."

She slipped around the bench and dropped down beside him.

"I was coming out the avenue and spied you mooning over here by yourself.
What's the trouble?"

"No trouble at all. Just stopped to get my wind a bit--and watch the
sunset."

"I think you are working too hard." She looked at him with anxious
solicitude. "I've a good notion to put you on buttermilk again."

"Good work! Put me on anything you like except dried peaches and
wienies."

"And you need more recreation," Rose persisted. "It's not good for
anybody to work all day and go to school at night. What's the matter with
us getting Cass and Fan Loomis and going down to Fontaine Ferry
to-night?"

"Can't do it," said Quin with ill-concealed pride. "Got a date with Miss
Eleanor Bartlett."

Rose sat silent for a moment, stirring the dead leaves with her shabby
boot; then she turned and laid her hand on his shoulder.

"Quin," she said, "I am worried sick about Nell and Harold Phipps."

Quin, who had been trying to beguile a squirrel into believing that a
pebble was a nut, looked up sharply.

"What do you mean?" he said. "She hasn't seen him since last summer, and
she never mentions his name."

"_Don't_ she? She hardly talks about anything else. She writes to him all
the time and wears his picture in her watch!"

"Do you know that?"

"Of course I know it. She can't talk about him at home, so she pours it
all out to me."

"But haven't you told her what you know about him?"

"I've hinted at it, but she won't believe me because she knows I hate
him. I wanted to tell her about what he said to me, and about that nurse
he got into trouble out at the hospital; but I was afraid it might make
an awful row and spoil everything for Papa Claude."

"I don't care who it spoils things for! She's got to be told." Quin's
eyes were blazing.

"But perhaps if we leave it alone he'll get tired of her. They say he
keeps after a girl until he gets her engaged to him, then drops her."

"He'd never drop Miss Nell. No man would. He'd be trying to marry her."

"But what can we _do?_ The more people talk about him, the more she's
going to take up for him. That's Nell all over."

"Couldn't Mr. Martel----"

"Papa Claude's as much taken in as she is. You remember the night over
home when he talked about his lovely detached soul? He never sees the
truth about anybody."

"Well, he's going to see the truth about this. If you don't write to him
to-night and tell him the kind of man Mr. Phipps is, I will!"

"Wait till to-morrow. I'll have another round with Nell. I've got some
proof that I think she'll have to believe."

Quin rose restlessly. He wanted to go to the Bartletts' at once, if only
to stand guard at the gate against the danger that threatened Eleanor.

"Aren't you coming home to supper?" asked Rose.

"No," he said absently; "I don't want any supper."

For an hour he paced the streets, trying to think things out. His burning
desire was to go straight to Eleanor and lay the whole matter before her.
But according to his ethics it was a poor sport who would discredit a
rival, especially on hearsay. He must leave it to Rose, and let her
furnish the proof she said she possessed.

At eight o'clock he rang the Bartletts' bell, and was surprised when Miss
Isobel opened the door.

"She isn't here," she said in answer to his inquiry. "We cannot imagine
what has become of her. She must have gone out just before dinner, and
she has not returned."

"Didn't she say where she was going?"

"No." Miss Isobel's lips worked nervously; then she drew Quin into the
dining-room and closed the door, "She and mother had a very serious
misunderstanding, and--and I'm afraid mother was a little severe. I did
not know Eleanor was gone until she failed to come down to dinner. I've
just sent Hannah up to telephone my brother to see if she is there."

"She probably is," Quin spoke with more assurance than he felt. "About
what time did she leave here?"

"It must have been between six-thirty and seven. How long would it take
her to get out to Ranny's?"

"Depends on whether she went in her machine or a street-car," said Quin
evasively. "Besides, she may have gone to the Martels'."

"I don't think so," said Miss Isobel, twisting her handkerchief in her
slender fingers; "because, you see, she--she took her suit-case."

For the first time, Quin's face reflected the anxiety of Miss Isobel's.

When Hannah returned she reported that no one answered the telephone at
the Randolph Bartletts'.

"Suppose the child gets there and nobody is at home!" groaned Miss
Isobel, whose imagination always rushed toward disaster. "What on earth
shall I do?"

"Leave it to me," said Quin. "I'll run around to the Martels', and if
she's not there I'll go out to Valley Mead. She's sure to be one place or
the other."

"Of course she must be; but I'm so anxious! You will go right away, won't
you? And telephone the minute you find out where she is. Then I'll tell
mother I gave her permission to go."

Miss Isobel pushed him toward the door as she spoke:

"You--you don't think anything dreadful could have happened to her, do
you?"

Quin patted her shoulder reassuringly.

"Of course not," he blustered. "She'll probably be in before I get around
the corner. If not, I bet I find her at the Martels', toasting
marshmallows."

In spite of his assumed confidence, he ran every step of the way home. As
he turned the corner he saw with dismay that the house was dark. His call
in the front hall brought no answer. He turned on the light, and saw an
unstamped letter addressed to himself on the table. The fact that the
writing was Eleanor's did not tend to decrease his alarm.

He tore off the envelop and read:

    _Dear Quin:_

    Grandmother has said things to me that I can never forgive as long as
    I live. I am leaving her house in a few moments forever. By the time
    you get this I shall be on my way to Chicago to join Harold Phipps.
    We have been engaged for two weeks. I did not mean to marry him for
    years and years, but I've simply _got_ to do something. He cares
    more for me and my career than any one else in the world, and he
    understands me better than anybody.

    You'll get this when you go home to supper, and I want you to
    telephone Aunt Isobel right away and tell her I won't be home
    to-night. She will think I am with Rose and that will keep her from
    being anxious. I don't care how anxious grandmother is! To-morrow
    I'll send them a wire from Chicago telling them I'm married.

    Dear Quin, I know this is a terribly serious step, and I know you
    won't approve; but I am unhappy enough to die, and I don't know where
    else to turn, or what to do. Some day I hope you will know Mr. Phipps
    better, and see what a really fine man he is. Do try to comfort Aunt
    Isobel, and make her understand. Please don't hate me, but try to
    forgive your utterly miserable friend,

    E. M. B.

Quin stood staring at the letter. He felt as he had on that August day
when the flying shrapnel struck him--the same intense nausea, the deadly
exhaustion, the bursting pain in his head. Involuntarily he raised his
hand to the old wound, half expecting to feel the blood stream again
through his fingers.

"Married! Married!" he kept repeating to himself dazedly. "Miss Nell gone
to marry that man, that scoundrel!"

He sat down on the stair steps and tried to hold the thought in his mind
long enough to realize it. But Phipps himself kept getting in the way:
Phipps the slacker, as he had known him in the army; Phipps the
condescending lord of creation, who had refused to take his hand at Mr.
Ranny's; and oftenest of all Phipps the philanderer, who had insulted
Rose Mattel, and been responsible for the dismissal of more than one
nurse from the hospital. The mere thought of such a man in connection
with Eleanor Bartlett made Quin's strong fingers clench around an
imaginary neck and brought beads of perspiration to his forehead.

"Something's got to be done!" he thought wildly, staggering to his feet.
"I got to stop it; I got----"

Then the sense of his helplessness swept over him, and he sat down again
on the steps. She had evidently left on the eight-o'clock train for
Chicago, and it was now eight-thirty. There was nothing to be done. What
a fool he had been to go on hoping and daring! She had told him again and
again that she didn't care for him; but she had also told him that she
did not intend to many anybody. But if she hadn't cared for him, why had
she come to him with her troubles, and followed his advice, and wanted
his good opinion? Why had she looked at him the way she had the day of
Miss Enid's wedding, and said she remembered her dances with him better
than those with anybody else? In bitterness of spirit he went over all
the treasured words and glances he had hoarded since the day he met her.
He didn't believe she loved Harold Phipps! She didn't love anybody--yet.
But, in her mad desire to escape from home, she had taken the first means
that presented itself. She had stepped into a trap, from which he was
powerless to rescue her.

In a sudden anguish of despair he flung himself face downward on the
steps and gave way to his anguish. There was no one to see and no one to
hear. All the doubts and discouragements, the humiliations and
disappointments, through which he had passed to win her, came back to
mock him, now he had lost her. The world had suddenly become an
intolerable vacuum in which he gasped frantically for breath.

What was the use in going on? Why not put an end to everything? He could
make it appear an accident. Nobody would be the wiser. The temptation was
growing stronger every second, when he suddenly remembered Miss Isobel.

"I forgot she was waiting," he muttered, stumbling into the sitting-room
and fumbling for the telephone. "Miss Nell said I was to keep her from
being anxious--she wanted me to comfort her. But what in hell can I say!"

                              CHAPTER 25

At nine-thirty Edwin came in and passed up the creaking stairs. Ten
minutes later Cass limped by the door, stopping a moment in the pantry to
get a bite to eat. Quin sat motionless in the dark sitting-room and made
no sign. He was waiting for Rose, with a dumb dependence the strongest
man feels for the understanding feminine in times of crisis.

When he heard her cheerful voice calling good night to Fan Loomis, the
clock was just striking ten.

"Quin! What is it?" she cried in alarm the moment she saw his face. "Is
anybody dead?"

"Worse! She's run away to get married!"

"Not Myrna?"

"No. Miss Nell. She left to-night for Chicago to marry Phipps!"

"But she can't!" cried Rose wildly. "It's got to be stopped. He's not fit
to marry anybody! We've got to stop her!"

"I tell you, it's too late! She left on the eight-o'clock train."

"Who said so? Are you sure? Do the Bartletts know?"

"Nobody knows but you and me; nobody must know--yet. Maybe she'll change
her mind."

"But the Bartletts will miss her. Have they called up?"

"I 'phoned Miss Isobel that she was all right and she'd telephone in the
morning. All right! Good God, Rose, can't we do something?"

"If I could get Harold Phipps's address I'd send him a telegram that
would scare the wits out of him."

Quin brushed the suggestion aside. "It's no use wasting time on him;
we've got to reach her."

"But how can we? Let me think. Do you suppose I could send her a telegram
to be delivered on the train? _Anything_ that would make her wait until
somebody could get to her."

"I'll get to her," Quin cried. "I'll search every hotel in Chicago. You
send the telegram and I'll start on the next train."

A hurried consultation of time-tables showed that a Pennsylvania train
left in ten minutes, and was due in Chicago the next morning at
seven-thirty.

"You can't make that," said Rose, but even as she spoke Quin was rushing
for the door.

"Have you got enough money?" she called after him.

His meteor flight was checked. Ramming his hands in his pockets, he
pulled out a handful of silver.

"Wait!" cried Rose, speeding up to her room and returning with a small
roll of bills. "It's what's left of Nell's check. Good-by--I'll send the
telegram."

Ten minutes later, as the night express for Chicago pulled out of the
station, the bystanders were amused by the sight of a bare-headed young
man dashing madly through the gate and across the railroad tracks. The
train had not yet got under way, but its speed was increasing and the
runner's chances lessened every moment.

"He'll never catch it," said the gate-keeper. "He'd lost his wind before
he got here."

"He ain't lost his nerve," said a negro porter, craning his neck in
lively interest. "He's lettin' hisself go lak a Derby-winner on de home
stretch!"

"Has he give up?" asked the gate-keeper, turning aside to stamp a ticket.

"Not him. He's bound to ketch dat train ef it busts a hamstring. He's
done got holt de rear platform! He's pullin' hisself up! There! I tole
you so! I knowed he was the kind of fellow that gits what he goes after."

Quin caught the train, but he paid for his run. A brakeman found him
collapsed on the platform, in such a paroxysm of coughing that the train
had covered many miles before he was sufficiently recovered to go inside
and take a seat. But, even as he leaned back limp and exhausted, he was
conscious of a dull satisfaction that he was traveling toward Eleanor. He
refused to think of the absurdity of his wild quest, of her probable
anger at his interference. He fought back his despair, his jealousy, his
inordinate fear. The one thing necessary now was to get to her--to be on
hand in case she needed him.

Through the interminable hours of the night almost every breath came with
an effort, but he scarcely heeded the fact. With characteristic
persistence he forced himself to follow her steps in imagination from the
time she left home until she reached her destination. The eight-o'clock
sleeper that she had taken was due in Chicago at five-thirty. She would
probably not leave it before seven at the earliest, and by that time
Rose's telegram ought to have reached her. He tried to picture its effect
on her. Much would depend upon the time that intervened between its
reception and her seeing Mr. Phipps. If he met her, as he probably would,
he would sweep aside all her doubts. If, on the other hand, Eleanor had
time to think the matter over, her innate common sense might make her
wait at least until she heard what Rose had to tell her. On the bare
chance of his not meeting her, what would she do? Take the next train
home? Go to his apartment? Go to a hotel alone?

Plan after plan rushed through Quin's mind, only to be impatiently
discarded. He sat tense and still, with his clenched hands rammed in his
pockets and his eyes fixed on the black square of the window. Sometimes
dim objects flew past, and now and then sharp, vivid lights stabbed the
darkness. Once the smelting-pots of a huge iron foundry belched forth a
circle of swirling flames, and for a moment wrenched his mind off his
problems. Then the regular pounding of the wheels on the rails recalled
him.

"She's gone to be married. Gone--to be married. Gone--to be married."

He realized that they had been saying it in monotonous rhythm ever since
he started--that they would go on saying it through eternity.

Suddenly the train jarred to a standstill. Figures with lanterns emerged
through a cloud of steam and stood under his window.

"Guess we got a hot-box," said a sleepy passenger across the aisle. "That
means I'll miss my connection."

Quin got up and went out on the platform. He was filled with rage at the
lazy deliberation with which the men set about their task. He longed to
wrench the tools out of their hands and do the job himself.

"How much will this put us behind?" he demanded of the conductor.

"Oh, not more than twenty minutes. We'll make some of it up before
morning."

Once more under way, Quin dropped into a troubled sleep. He dreamed that
he was pursuing a Hun over miles of barbed-wire entanglements; but when
he overtook him and forced him to the ground, the face under the steel
helmet was the smiling, supercilious face of Harold Phipps. He woke up
with a start and stretched his cold limbs. The black square of the window
had turned to gray; arrows of rain shot diagonally across it. He realized
for the first time that he had neither hat nor overcoat, but he did not
care. In ten minutes more he would be in Chicago, in the same city with
Eleanor.

Notwithstanding the fact that it was pouring rain when the train pulled
into the station, Quin stood on the lowest step of the platform, ready to
alight.

"Say, young fellow, you forgot your hat," said a man behind him.

"Didn't have any," answered Quin.

"I got an extra cap if you want it," offered the man obligingly.

Quin, already on the platform, caught it as the man tossed it out to him.
Dashing through the depot, he hurled himself into a taxi.

"Monon Station!" he shouted, "and drive like the devil."

Just what kind of chauffeur the devil is has never been demonstrated, but
if that taxi-driver, urged on by Quin, was his counterpart, it is safe to
infer that there are no traffic laws in Hades. In spite of the fact that
the streets were like glass from the driving rain, and the wind-shield a
gray blur, in spite of the fact that a tire went flat on a rear wheel,
that decrepit old taxi rose to the occasion and made the transit in
record time.

Arrived at the station, Quin thrust a bill into the driver's hand and
dashed down the steps to the lower level. In answer to his frenzied
inquiry he was told that the Express had come in two hours before and
that the passengers had probably all left the sleeper by this time.

Nothing daunted, he rushed out to the tracks and accosted a porter who
was sweeping out the rear coach.

"Yas, sir, this is it," answered the negro. "Young lady? Yas, sir; there
was five or six of 'em on board last night. Pretty? Yas, sir, they was
all pretty--all but one, and she wasn't so bad looking."

"Did one of them get a telegram in the night or this morning?"

The porter's face brightened. "Yas, sir. Boy come through soon as we got
in. Had a wire for young lady in lower six."

"Do you know what time she left the car?"

"About half hour ago, I should say. Party she was expecting to meet her
didn't turn up, and I had to git her a red-cap to carry her suit-case.
Thanky, sir."

Quin tore back to the station and dashed through the waiting-room, the
dining-room, the baggage-room. He was on the point of going out to the
taxi-stand and interrogating each driver in turn, when his eyes were
caught by a smart suit-case that lay unattended on one of the seats. It
bore the inscription "E.M.B.--Ky."

In his sudden relief he could have snatched it up and embraced it. But
where was Eleanor? For five interminable minutes he stood guard over her
property, watching every exit and entrance, and pacing the floor in his
impatience. Suddenly an idea occurred to him, and, cursing himself for
his stupidity, he strode over to the telephone-booths.

Eleanor was in the corner one, the receiver at her ear, evidently waiting
for her call. As Quin flung upon the door she turned and faced him in
defiant surprise.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded indignantly. "Did grandmother
send you?"

"No; she doesn't know I'm here."

Eleanor turned nervously to the telephone.

"Hello! I can't understand you. Put--what? Oh! I forgot. Wait a
minute----"

Letting the receiver swing, she fumbled in her purse; then, finding no
small change, looked appealingly at Quin.

He produced the necessary coin and handed it to her.

"I don't think I'd put it in just yet," he said quietly.

For a moment she paused irresolute; then she dropped the coin in the
slot.

"Is this the Hotel Kington?" she asked. "Will you please try again to get
Mr. Phipps--Harold Phipps? P-h-i-p-p-s."

Quin watched her fingers drumming on the shelf, and he knew he ought to
go out of the booth and close the door; but instead he stayed in and
closed it.

"He doesn't answer?" Eleanor was repeating over the telephone. "Will you
please page the dining-room, and if he is not at breakfast send a
bell-boy up to waken him? It's _very_ important."

Again there was a long wait, during which Eleanor did not so much as turn
her head in Quin's direction. It was only when her answer came that she
looked at him blankly.

"They say he isn't there. The chambermaid was cleaning the room, and said
his bed had not been disturbed."

Then, seeing a humorously unsympathetic look flit across Quin's face, she
burst out angrily:

"What right had you to follow me over here?"

They were standing very close in the narrow glass enclosure, and as he
looked down at the small, trembling figure with her back against the wall
and her eyes full of frightened defiance, he felt uncomfortably like a
hunter who has run down some young wild thing and holds it at bay.

"Please, Miss Nell," he implored, "don't think I'm going to peach on you!
Whatever you do, I'll stand by you. Only I thought, perhaps, you might
need a friend."

"I _have_ a friend!" she retorted furiously. "If Harold Phipps had
received my telegram last night, nothing in the world could have stopped
him from meeting me--nothing!"

Then the defiance dropped from her eyes, leaving her small sensitive face
quivering with hurt pride and an overwhelming doubt. She bit her lips and
turned away to hide her tears.

Quin put a firm hand on her arm and piloted her back to her suit-case.

"What we both need is breakfast," he said. "Come to think of it, I
haven't had a mouthful since yesterday noon."

"Neither have I; but I couldn't swallow a bite. Besides, I've got to find
Harold."

"Well, you can't do anything till he gets back to the hotel. If you'll
come in with me while I get a cup of coffee, we can talk things over."

She followed him reluctantly into the dining-room, but refused to order
anything. For some time she sat with her chin on her clasped hands,
watching the door; then she turned toward him accusingly.

"Did you see Rose's telegram?"

"No."

He watched her open her purse and take out a yellow slip, which she
handed to him.

    "Don't take the step planned. Imperative reasons forbid. Rose."

he read slowly; then he looked up. "Well?" he said.

"What does she mean?" burst forth Eleanor. "How dared she send me a
message like that unless she knew something----"

She broke off abruptly and her eyes searched Quin's face. But he was
apparently counting the grains of sugar that were going into his coffee,
and refused to look up.

"If it had been grandmother or Aunt Isobel I shouldn't have been in the
least surprised; they are just a bunch of prejudices and believe every
idle story they hear. But Rose is different. She's known about Harold and
me for months. She forwarded his letters to me when I was in Baltimore.
And now for her to turn against me like this----"

"Why don't you wait till you hear her side of it?" suggested Quin, still
concerned with the sugar-bowl.

"How can I?" cried Eleanor, flinging out her hands. "I've no place to go,
and I've no money. If I had had money enough I'd have gone straight to
Papa Claude last night."

Quin's heart gained a beat. He made a hurried calculation of his
financial resources in the vain hope that that might yet be the solution
of the difficulty. Whatever was to be done must be done at once, for
Harold Phipps might arrive at any moment, and Quin felt instinctively
that his advent would decide the matter.

"I wish I had enough to send you," he said, "but all I've got is my
return ticket and enough to buy another one for you."

At the mere suggestion Eleanor's anger flared.

"I'll never go back to grandmother's! I'll jump in the lake first!"

"What's the matter with Valley Mead?"

"What good would that do? Grandmother would make Uncle Ranny send me
straight home. No; I've thought of all those things--it's no use."

"You could go to the Martels'."

"Yes, and put another burden on Cass. I tell you, I'm not going home. I
am going to see Harold, and--and talk things over, and perhaps go
straight on to New York to-night."

"You can't see him if he is out of town."

"Why do you think he is out of town?"

"Well, he isn't here," Quin observed dryly.

The next moment he was sorry he had said it, for the light died out of
her face and she looked so absurdly young and helpless that it was all he
could do to refrain from gathering her up in his arms and carrying her
home by force.

"See here, Miss Nell," he said earnestly, leaning across the table.
"Would you be willing to go back to the Martels' if you knew that this
time next month you'd be in New York with money enough to carry you
through the winter?"

"No. That is--whose money?"

"Your own. I'll go to Queen Vic and put the whole thing up to her so she
can't get around it."

Eleanor brushed the suggestion aside impatiently.

"Don't you suppose I've exhausted every possible argument? And now, when
she finds out what I've done----"

"But you haven't done anything--yet."

"She wouldn't believe me if I told her that I hadn't seen Harold. She
never believes me."

"She'd believe _me_," said Quin, "and what's more she'd listen to me."

Eleanor did not answer; she sat doggedly watching the swinging doors,
through which a draggled throng came and went.

"He'll be here soon," she said half-heartedly--"unless he's gone off for
a week-end somewhere. If he doesn't come soon we can go up to the hotel
and find out whether he left any address. Perhaps you could get me a room
there until to-morrow."

Quin's courage was at its lowest ebb. It was like trying to save a
drowning person who fights desperately against being saved. He heard a
stentorian voice through a megaphone announcing that the eight-thirty
train for the southwest would leave in five minutes on track three, and
he decided to stake his all on a last chance.

"That's my train," he said, rising briskly. "Are you coming with me, or
are you going to stay here?"

"I am going to stay. But you can't leave me like this! It's pouring rain
and I haven't any umbrella, and if I get to the hotel and he isn't there,
what shall I do? Why don't you help me, Quin? Why don't you stay with me
till he comes?"

"Sorry," said Quin, steeling his heart against those appealing eyes and
praying for strength to be firm, "but I've got to be ready to go back to
work to-morrow morning. Is it good-by?"

He held out his hand, but she did not take it. Instead she clutched his
sleeve.

"What would _you_ do, Quin?" she asked. "Tell me honestly, not what you
want me to do, or think I ought to do, but what would you do in my
place?"

In spite of his pretended haste, he stopped to consider the matter.

"Well," he admitted frankly, "it would depend entirely on how much I
trusted the fellow I'd promised to marry."

"I _do_ trust him, and I'm going to marry him; but, you see, Rose's
telegram, and his not being here, and all, have made me so unhappy! I
know he can explain everything when I see him, only I don't know what to
do now. Do you think I ought to go back?"

"That's for you to decide."

"But I tell you I can't decide. Somebody's always made up my mind for me,
and now to have to decide this big thing all in a minute----"

"All aboard for the Southwestern Limited!" came the voice through the
megaphone.

Eleanor glanced instinctively at her suit-case, then up at Quin.

"Shall I take it?" he asked, with his heart in his throat; and then, when
she did not say no, he seized it in one hand and her in the other.

"We'd better run for it!" he said.

"But, Quin--wait a minute--I won't go to grandmother's! You've got to
protect me----"

"You leave it to me!" he said, as he thrust her almost roughly through
the crowd and rushed her toward the gate.

                              CHAPTER 26

"So I am to understand that the young lady defies my authority and
refuses point-blank to come home."

"That's about what it comes to, I reckon."

It was evening of that eventful Sunday when Eleanor and Quin had returned
from Chicago. He and Madam Bartlett sat facing each other in the
sepulchral library, where the green reading-light cast its sickly light
on Lincoln and his Cabinet, on Andrew Jackson dying in the bosom of his
family, on Madam savagely gripping the lions' heads on the arms of her
mahogany chair.

That her quarrel with Eleanor and the girl's subsequent flight had made
the old lady suffer was evinced by the pinched look of her nostrils and
the heavy, sagging lines about her mouth; but in her grim old eyes there
was no sign of compromise.

"Very well!" she said. "Let her stay at her precious Martels'. She will
stand just about one week of their shiftlessness. I shan't send her a
stitch of clothes or a cent of money. Maybe I can starve some sense into
her."

Quin traced the pattern in the table-cover with a massive brass
paper-knife. It was a delicate business, this he had committed himself
to, and everything depended upon his keeping Madam's confidence.

"You never did try letting her have her head, did you?" He put the
question as a disinterested observer.

"No. I don't intend to until she gets this fool stage business out of her
mind."

"Well, of course you can hold that up for six months, but you can't stop
it in the end."

"Yes, I can, too. I'd like to know if I didn't keep Isobel from being a
missionary, and Enid from marrying Francis Chester when he didn't make
enough money to pay her carfare."

"That's so," agreed Quin cheerfully. "And then, there was Mr. Ranny." He
waited for the remark to sink in; then he went on lightly: "But say! They
all belong to another generation. Things are run on different lines these
days."

"More's the pity! Every little fool of a kite thinks all it has to do is
to break its string to be free."

"Miss Nell don't want to break the string; she just wants it lengthened."

Madam turned upon him fiercely.

"See here, young man. You think I don't know what you are up to; but,
remember, I wasn't born yesterday. If Eleanor has sent you up here to
talk this New York stuff----"

"She hasn't; I came of my own accord."

"Well, you needn't think just because I've shown you a few favors that
you can meddle in family affairs. It's not the first time you've attended
to other people's business."

Her fingers were working nervously and her eyes beginning to twitch. She
made Quin think of Minerva when Mr. Bangs came into the office.

"I bet there's one time you are glad I meddled," he said with easy good
humor. "You might have been walking on a peg-stick, Queen Vic, if I
hadn't butted in. Do you have to use your crutches now?"

"Crutches! I should say not. I don't even use a cane. See here!"

She rose and, steadying herself, walked slowly and painfully to the door
and back.

"Bully for you!" said Quin, helping her back into the chair. "Now what
were we talking about?"

"You were trying to hold a brief for Eleanor."

"So I was. You see, I had an idea that if you'd let me put the case up to
you fair and square, maybe you'd see it in a different light."

"Well, that's where you were mistaken."

"How do you know? You haven't listened to me yet!"

Madam glared at him grimly.

"Go ahead," he said. "Get it out of your system."

"Well, it's like this," Quin plunged into his subject. "Next July Miss
Nell will be of age and have her own money to do as she likes with, won't
she?"

"She won't have much," interpolated Madam. "Twenty thousand won't take
her far."

"It will take her to New York and let her live pretty fine for two or
three years. Everybody will cotton up to her and flatter her and make her
think she's a second Julia Marlowe, and meantime they'll be helping her
spend her money. Now, my plan is this. Why don't you give her just barely
enough to live on, and let her try it out on the seamy side for the next
six months? Nobody will know who she is or what's coming to her, and
maybe when she comes up against the real thing she won't be so keen about
it."

Madam followed him closely, and for a moment it looked as if the common
sense of his argument appealed to her. Then her face set like a vise.

"No!" she thundered her decision. "It would be nothing less than handing
her over bodily to that pompous old biped Claude Martel! For the next six
months she has got to stay right here, where I can know what she is doing
and where she is!"

"Do you know where she was last night?" Quin played his last trump.

She shot a suspicious look at him from under her shaggy brows.

"You said she was at the Martels'."

"I did not. I said she was all right and you'd hear from her to-day."

"Where was she?"

"She was on the way to Chicago to join Mr. Phipps."

He could not have aimed his blow more accurately. Its effect was so
appalling that he feared the consequences. Her face blanched to an ashy
white and her eyes were fixed with terror.

"She--she--hasn't married him?" she cried hoarsely.

"No, no; not yet. But she may any time."

"Good Lord! Why haven't you told me this before? Call Isobel! No! she's
at church! Get Ranny! Somebody must go after the child!"

Quin laid a quieting hand on her arm, which was shaking as if with the
palsy.

"Don't get excited," he urged. "Somebody did go after her last night, and
brought her home."

"But where is she now? Where is that contemptible Phipps? I'll have him
arrested! Are you sure Nellie is safe?"

"I left her safe and sound at the Martels' half an hour ago. Will you
listen while I tell you all about it?"

As quietly as he could he told the story, interrupted again and again by
Madam's hysterical outbursts. When he had finished she struggled to her
feet.

"The child is stark mad!" she cried. "I am going after her this instant."

"She won't see you," warned Quin.

"I'll show you whether she sees me or not! I am going to bring her home
with me to-night. She's got to be protected against that scoundrel. Ring
for the carriage!"

Quin did not move. "She said if any of you started after her you'd find
her gone when you got there."

"But who will tell her?"

"I will. I promised she wouldn't have to see you. It was the only way I
could get her back from Chicago."

She scowled at him in silence, measuring his determination against her
own.

"Very well," she said at last. "Since you are in such high favor, go and
tell her that she can come home, and nothing more will be said about it.
I suppose there's nothing else to do under the circumstances. But I'll
teach her a lesson later!"

Quin balanced the paper-knife carefully on one finger.

"I don't think you quite understand," he said. "She isn't coming home.
She still says she is going to marry Mr. Phipps. He will probably get her
telegram when he goes to the hotel, and when she doesn't turn up in
Chicago he will take the first train down here. That's the way I've
figured it out."

"And do you think I am going to sit here, and do nothing while all this
is taking place?"

"No; that's what I been driving at all along. I want you and Miss Nell to
come to some compromise before he gets here."

"What sort of compromise? Haven't I swallowed my pride and promised to
say nothing if she comes back? Does she want me to get down on my knees
and apologize?"

"No. That's the trouble. She don't want you to do anything. All she is
thinking about is getting married and going to New York."

"She can go to New York without that! That contemptible man! I knew all
summer he was filling her head with romantic notions, but I never dreamed
of this. Why, she's nothing but a child! She doesn't know what love
is----" Then her voice broke in sudden panic. "We must stop it at any
cost. Go--go promise her anything. Tell her I'll send her to New York, to
Europe, anywhere to get her out of that wretch's clutches. My poor child!
My poor baby!"

Her grief was no less violent than her anger had been, and her tearless
sobs almost shook her worn old frame to pieces.

Quin knew just how she felt. It had been like that with him last night
when he heard the news. With one stride he was beside her and had
gathered her into his arms.

"There, there!" he said tenderly. "It's going to be all right. We are
going to find a way out."

This unexpected caress, probably the first one Madam had received in many
years, reduced her to a state of unprecedented humility. She transferred
her resentment from Eleanor to Harold Phipps, and announced herself ready
to follow whatever course Quin suggested.

"I'd offer her just this and nothing more," he advised: "The fare to New
York, tuition at the dramatic school, and ten dollars a week."

"She can't live on that."

"Yes, she can. Rose Martel does."

Madam became truculent at once.

"Don't quote that girl to me. Eleanor's been used to very different
surroundings."

"That's the point. Let her have what she hasn't been used to. You have
tried giving her a bunch of your money and telling her how to spend it.
Try giving her a little of her own and letting her do as she likes with
it."

"I don't care what she does for the present, if she just won't marry that
man Phipps. Make her give you her word of honor not to have anything
whatever to do with him for the next six months. By that time she will
have forgotten all about him."

"I'll do my best," said Quin, rising. "You'll hear from me first thing in
the morning."

"Well, go now! But ring first for Hannah. We must pack the child's things
to-night. The main thing is to get her out of town before that hound can
get here. Don't you think either Ranny or Isobel had better take her on
to New York to-morrow?"

Quin returned to the Martels' breathing easily for the first time in
twenty-four hours. As he passed Rose's room on the way to his own, he saw
a light over the transom, and heard the girls' voices rising in heated
argument. He knew that the subject under discussion was Harold Phipps,
and that Rose's arraignment was meeting with indignant denial and
protest. But the fact that Rose could offer specific evidence that would
shake the staunchest confidence gave him grim satisfaction.

He stumbled into his own small room, and lay across the bed looking up at
the shadows made by the street lamp on the ceiling. Would Miss Nell
believe what she heard? Would it go very hard with her? Would she give
Phipps up? Would she accept Madam's offer? And, if she did, would she
ever be willing to come home again?

Then his thoughts swerved away from all those perplexing questions and
went racing back over the events of the day. For nine blissful hours he
had had Eleanor all to himself. They had taken a day-coach to avoid
meeting any one she knew, and he had managed to secure a rear seat, out
of the range of curious eyes. Here she had poured out all her troubles,
allowing the accumulated bitterness of years to find vent in a torrent of
unrestrained confidence.

She recalled the days of her unhappy childhood, when she had been fought
over and litigated about and contended for, until the whole world seemed
a place of hideous discord and petty jealousies. She pictured her
circumscribed life at the Bartletts', shut in, watched over, smothered
with care and affection, but never allowed an hour of freedom. She dwelt
on the increasing tyranny of her grandmother, the objection to her
friends, the ruthless handling of several prospective lovers. And she
ended by telling him all about her affair with Harold Phipps, and
declaring that nothing they could say or do would make her give him up!
And then, quite worn out, she had fallen asleep and her head had drooped
against his shoulder.

Quin could feel now the delicious weight of her limp body as she leaned
against him. He had sat so still, in his fear of waking her, that his arm
had been numb for an hour. Then, later on, when she did wake up, he had
got her some cold water to bathe her face, and persuaded her to eat a
sandwich and drink a glass of milk. After that she had felt much better,
and even cheered up enough to laugh at the way he looked in the queer cap
the obliging stranger had given him.

"I could make her happy! I know I could make her happy!" he whispered
passionately to the shadows on the ceiling. "She don't love me now; but
maybe when she gets over this----"

His thoughts leaped to the future. He must be ready if the time ever
came. He must forge ahead in the next six months, and be in a position by
the time Eleanor had tried out her experiment to put his fate to the
test. He must make up to old Bangs, and stop criticizing his methods and
saying things that annoyed him. He must sacrifice everything now to the
one great object of pleasing him. Pleasing him meant advancement;
advancement meant success; success might mean Eleanor!

He got up restlessly and tiptoed to the door. The light over Rose's
transom was gone and the house was silent.

                              CHAPTER 27

Eleanor did not leave for New York the following day. Neither did she see
Harold Phipps when he arrived on the morning train. His anxious inquiries
over the telephone were met by Rose's cool assurance that Miss Bartlett
was spending the week-end with her, and that she would write and explain
her silly telegram. His demand for an immediate interview was parried
with the excuse that Miss Bartlett was confined to her bed with a severe
headache and could not see any one. Without saying so directly, Rose
managed to convey the impression that Miss Bartlett was quite indifferent
to his presence in the city and not at all sure that she would be able to
see him at all.

This was an interpretation of the situation decidedly more liberal than
the facts warranted. Even after Eleanor had been served with the
unpalatable truth, generously garnished with unpleasant gossip, she still
clung to her belief in Harold and the conviction that he would be able to
explain everything when she saw him. Quin's report of Madam's offer to
send her to New York was received in noncommittal silence. She would
agree to nothing, she declared, until she saw Harold, her only concession
being that she would stay in bed until the afternoon and not see him
before evening.

About noon a messenger-boy brought her a box of flowers and a bulky
letter. The latter had evidently been written immediately after Harold's
talk with Rose, and he made the fatal mistake of concluding, from her
remarks, that Eleanor had changed her mind after sending the telegram and
had not come to Chicago. He therefore gave free rein to his imagination,
describing in burning rhetoric how he had received her message Saturday
night just as he was retiring, how he tossed impatiently on his bed all
night, and rose at dawn to be at the station when the train came in. He
pictured vividly his ecstasy of expectation, his futile search, his
bitter disappointment. He had dropped everything, he declared, to take
the next train to Kentucky to find out what had changed her plans, and to
persuade her to be married at once and return with him to Chicago. The
epistle ended with a love rhapsody that deserved a better fate than to be
torn into shreds and consigned to the waste-basket.

"Tell the boy not to wait!" was Eleanor's furious instruction. "Tell him
there's no answer now or ever!"

Then she pitched the flowers after the note, locked her door, and refused