As nearly as I can express it, Mary was in love with love, and could no more help it than she could help the crease in her chin or the dreaminess of her eyes. If Archey had had the field to himself, her heart might soon have turned to him as unconsciously and innocently as a flower turns its petals to the sun. But the day after Archey returned, Wally Cabot came back and he, too, laid his souvenirs at Mary's feet.

It was the same Wally as ever.

He had also brought a piece of old lace for Aunt Cordelia, a jet necklace for Aunt Patty, a prison-camp brooch for Helen. All afternoon he held them with tales of his adventures in the air, rolling up his sleeve to show them a scar on his arm, and bending his head down so they could see where a German ace had nicked a bit of his hair out.

More than once Mary felt her breath come faster, and when Aunt Cordelia invited him to stay to dinner and he chanced to look at her, she gave a barely perceptible signal "Yes," and smiled to herself at the warmth of his acceptance.

"I'll telephone mother," he said, briskly rising. "Where's the phone, Mary? I forget the way."

She arose to show him.

"Let's waltz out," he laughed. "Play something, Helen. Something lively and happy...."

It was a long time before Mary went to sleep that night. The moon was nearly full and shone in her windows, a stream of its rays falling on her bed and bringing to her those immortal waves of fancy which begin where the scent of flowers stop, and end where immortal and melancholy music begins. Unbidden tears came to her eyes, though she couldn't have told you why, and again a sense of the fleeting of time disturbed her.

"Aunt Mary ..." In a few years she would be old, and her hair would be white like Aunt Patty's.... And in a few years more....

But even as Wally Cabot kept her from thinking too much of Archey Forbes, so now Archey unconsciously revenged himself and kept her thoughts from centring too closely around Wally Cabot.

Archey called the next afternoon and Mary sat on the veranda steps with him, while Helen made hay with Wally on a tete-a-tete above.

The few women who were left in the factory were having things made unpleasant for them: that was what Archey had come to tell her. Their canteen had been stopped; the day nursery discontinued; the nurses discharged.

"Of course they are not needed there any longer, so far as that is concerned," concluded Archey, "but they certainly helped us out of a hole when we did need them, and it doesn't seem right now to treat them rough."

At hearing this, a guilty feeling pa.s.sed over Mary and left her cheeks warm. "They'll think I've deserted them," she thought.

"Well, haven't you?" something inside her asked.

Some of her old dreams returned to her mind, as though to mock her. She was going to be a new Moses once, leading her sisters out of the house of bondage. Woman was to have things different. Old drudgeries were to be lifted from her shoulders. The night was over. The dawn was at hand.

"Well, what can I do?" she thought uneasily.

"You can stop them from being treated roughly," something inside her answered.

"I can certainly do that," she nodded to herself. "I'll telephone Uncle Stanley right away."

But Uncle Stanley was out, and Mary was going riding with Wally that afternoon. So she wrote a hurried note and left it at the factory as they pa.s.sed by.

"Dear Uncle Stanley," it read,

"Please see that every courtesy and attention is shown, the women who are still working. We may need them again some day.

"Sincerely,

"MARY."

"Now!" she said to Wally, and they started on their ride. And, oh, but that was a ride!

The afternoon was perfect, the sun warm but not hot, the air crystal clear. It had showered the night before and the world, in its spring dress, looked as though it had been washed and spruced for their approval.

"All roses and lilies!" laughed Wally. "That's how I like life!"

They went along hillsides and looked down into the beautiful valleys; they wound around by the sides of rivers and through deep woods; they went like the wind; they loafed; they explored country lanes and lost their way, stopped at a farm-house and found it again, shouted with delight when a squirrel tried to race them along the top of a fence, gasped together when they nearly ran over a turkey, chatted, laughed, sang (though this was a solo, for Mary couldn't sing, though she tried now and then under her breath), and with every mile they rode they seemed to pa.s.s invisible milestones along the road which leads from friendship to love.

It came to a crisis two weeks later, on an afternoon in June.

Mary was in the garden picking a bouquet for the table, and Wally went to help her. She gave him a smile that made his heart do a trick, and when he bent over to help her break a piece of mignonette, his hand touched hers....

"Mary...." he whispered.

"Yes?"

"Do you love me a little bit now?"

"I wonder...." said she, and they both bent over to pick another piece of mignonette. Away down deep in Mary, a voice whispered, "Somebody's watching." She looked toward the house and caught sight of Helen who was sitting sideways on the veranda rail and missing never a move.

Wally followed Mary's glance.

"She'll be down here in a minute," he frowned to himself. At the bottom of the lawn, overlooking the valley, was a summer house of rustic cedar, nearly covered with honeysuckle.

"Let's take a stroll down there, shall we?" he asked.

The tremor of his voice told Mary more than his words.

"He wants to love me," she thought, and burying her face in her bouquet she said in a m.u.f.fled little voice, "...I don't care."

They went down to the summer house, talking, trying to appear indifferent, but both of them knowing that a truly tremendous moment in their drama of life was close at hand.

They seated themselves opposite each other on the bench and Mary's dreamy eyes went out over the valley.

"Mary...." he began. She looked at him for a moment and then her glance went out over the valley again.

"Don't you think we've waited long enough?" he gently asked.

But Mary's eyes were still upon the valley below.

"In a way, I'm glad you've waited," he said. "Judge Cutler told me some of the wonderful things you did here during the war. But you don't want to be bothering with a factory as long as you live. It's grubby, narrow work, and there's so much else in life, so much that's beautiful and--and wonderful--"

For a fleeting moment a picture arose before Mary's eyes: a tired woman bending over a wash-tub with a crying child tugging at her skirt. "So much that's beautiful--and wonderful"--the words were still echoing around her, and almost without thinking she said a peculiar thing.

"Suppose we were poor," said she.

"But we aren't poor," smiled Wally. "That's one reason why I want to take you away from this. What's the use of having things if you can't enjoy them?"

She thought that over.

"There is so much that I have always wanted to see," he continued, "but I've had sense enough to wait until I found the right girl--so we could go and see it together. Switzerland--and the Nile--and j.a.pan--and the Riviera, with 'its skies for ever blue.' Any place we liked, we could stay till we were tired of it. And a house in New York--and an island in the St. Lawrence--or down near Palm Beach. There's nothing we couldn't do--nothing we couldn't have--"

"But don't you think--" hesitated Mary and then stopped, timid of breaking the spell which was stealing over her.