Her colour came up, her heart gave a curious twist, and she dropped her eyes.

"Dryden and I have been batching it together in New York," said Dean Silver. "My wife's been here since April with her mother and our kid.

When I came on, I got Dryden here to come, too. They want me to take a long sea trip: I hope you'll help me persuade him to come, too. He's trying to double-cross me on it, I think. He said he'd come as far as California, and then see how things looked. So we shipped the car last month, and left New York a week ago to-day."

"Well, Monroe is honoured," Martie smiled, amused, fluttered, a little confused by this open recognition of John's feeling. "But now that you're here, I don't know quite what to do with you!"

"There's a hotel?" asked the novelist.

"Oh, it's not that. I'm only anxious to make the most of you," said Martie. "We've more than enough room at our house! But, like poor f.a.n.n.y Squeers, I do so palpitate!"

"Palpitate away!" said Dean Silver. "We're in your hands. You can send us off right now, or let us take you to dinner somewhere, or direct us to the hotel--for three thousand miles our main idea was to find you, and we've done it!"

"Well, but JOHN!" Martie was still dazed and exulting. "It's so GOOD to see you!"

"I had to see you," he said, in his simple way, his eyes never leaving her.

"But now, let me plan!" she said, with an excited laugh. "If you'll let me get in the car with you, and--and let me see, we'd better get something extra for company--"

"Now, that's just what you shan't do," Dean Silver said decisively. "I don't propose to have you--"

"Oh, she likes it," John a.s.sured him, with his dreamy air that was yet so positive. "Don't waste time, Dean."

Martie laughed; John sat between herself and the novelist in the wide seat. He turned his head so that she was always under the fire of his adoring eyes. And in the old way he laughed, thrilled, exulted in everything she said.

Half an hour later, as gaily as if she had known them both all her life, she introduced them to Pa. Pa, whose youngest daughter was just now in high favour, was mildly pleased with the invasion. This impromptu hospitality smacked of prosperity, of worldliness. He went stiffly into the study with John, to bore the poet with an old volume about California: "From the Padres to the Pioneers."

Martie, cheerfully setting the dining table, kept a brisk conversation moving with Dean Silver, who sat smoking on the side porch.

Presently she came put with an empty gla.s.s bowl, which she set down beside him. He followed her down into the tipsy brick paths, under the willows, while she gathered velvet wallflowers to fill it.

"You're very clever at this village sort of thing," the writer said.

"And I must say I like it myself. Old-fashioned street full of kids streaming in for ice-cream, garden with stocks and what-you-call-'ems all blooming together--you know, I had a sort of notion you weren't half as nice as you are!"

Martie laughed, pleased at the frank audacity.

"You fit into it all so pleasantly!" he expanded his thought.

"I don't know why you say that," she answered, surprised. "I was born here. I belong here. I lived for years in New York without being able to demonstrate that I could do anything better!"

"Dryden has a great idea of what you can do," Silver suggested.

"Oh, well, John!" she laughed maternally. "If you've been listening to John--"

"I've HAD to listen to him," the novelist said mildly.

"Tell me," she said suddenly, "I don't want to say the awkward thing to him--has he got his divorce?"

He looked at her, amazed.

"Don't you correspond?"

"Twice a year, perhaps."

Dean Silver flung away his cigarette, and sunk his hands in his pockets.

"Certainly he's divorced," he said briefly.

Martie's heart thumped. The flowers in her hands, she stood staring away from him, unseeing.

"I hope you'll forgive me--I feel like a fool touching the thing at all," Dean Silver said, after a silence. "But I thought that there was some sort of an understanding between you."

"Oh, no!" Martie half-whispered, with a fluttered breath.

"There isn't?" he asked, in a tone of keen protest.

"Oh, no!"

The novelist whistled a few notes and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, then, there isn't," he said philosophically. He stooped to pick a fragrant spike of mignonette, and put it in his b.u.t.tonhole. When he began speaking again, he did not look at Martie. "A few of us have come to know Dryden well, this winter," he said gravely. "He's a rare fellow, Mrs. Bannister--a big man, and he's got his field to himself.

You wouldn't believe me if I told you what a fuss they've been making over him--back there, and how little it matters to him. He's going a long way. You--you've got to be kind to him, my dear girl."

"I'm a Catholic, and he's a divorced man," Martie said, turning troubled eyes toward him. "I never thought of him in that way!"

Dean Silver raised his eyebrows.

"People are still believing that sort of thing, are they?"

"Only about a hundred million!" she answered, drily in her turn.

The man laughed shortly.

"Sweet complication!" he observed.

"More than that," Martie said hurriedly, "I'm engaged to be married to the president of the bank here, in about six weeks!"

Their eyes met steadily for a full minute.

"I devoutly trust you are not serious?" said Dean Silver then.

"Oh, but I am!" she said, with a nervous laugh.

For answer he merely shrugged his shoulders again. In silence they turned toward the house.

"That is an actual settled fact, is it?" Silver asked, when they were at the steps.

"Why, yes!" Martie answered, feeling a strange inclination toward tears. "I've been here for a year and a half," she added lamely. "I've not seen John--I tell you I never thought of him as anything but Adele's husband! And Clifford--the man I am to marry--is a good man, and it means a home for life for my boy and me--and it means the greatest pleasure to my father and sisters--"

"I think I never heard such a d.a.m.nable set of reasons for a beautiful woman's marriage!" Silver said, as she paused.