"I sure never would have thought you were morbid," said Holt, from his seat on the edge of a table, whence he dangled his legs.

"Morbid?" repeated Stainton. "I am not."

"I mean--you know: about death and old age and all that sort of thing."

"I thought I had explained all that last night."

"It must have been over when I was with you in the West."

"It wasn't."

"Not when you were the first man to volunteer to go down in the shaft of 'Better Days' mine after the explosion?"

"I have rarely been more afraid than I was then."

"Or when you played head-nurse in the spotted-fever mess at Sunnyside?"

"I was nearly sick--scared sick--myself."

Holt's patent-leather boots flashed in and out of the shadow cast by the table-edge.

"Hum," he said. "It don't seem to show a healthy state of mind, does it?"

Stainton had disappeared into his bedroom. From there his answer came, partly m.u.f.fled by the half-closed door.

"I don't care to talk any more about it. I made my explanation to you last night, because I had promised to make one. That's all."

"I'm afraid I was a bit illuminated last night," said Holt.

"You were."

"Still, you know, I knew what I was saying."

Stainton did not reply.

"And what I said," Holt supplemented, "is what I think now and what I always will think."

"Very well. Let it go at that, George."

Holt made a mighty effort.

"The plain truth is," said he, "that people will call you an old fool to buy a piece of undressed kid."

Stainton's bulky figure filled the doorway. He was in his shirt-sleeves, his hands busy with the collar-b.u.t.ton at the back of his neck.

"That will do," he said.

"I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings----" said Holt.

"Then keep quiet."

"But you ought to know what people will say. Someone's got to tell you."

"I don't care what people will say."

"They'll say----"

Stainton advanced. His hands were now at his side, idle, but his face was completely calm.

"Never mind," he said.

"They'll say," concluded Holt, "that you're buying the little girl, and that you've been cheated in the transaction----"

Stainton's hands were raised. They descended heavily upon Holt's shoulders. They plucked Holt from his perch and shook him until his teeth chattered. Then they dropped him, rather gently, into a chair.

"Now," said Stainton. His face was firm, and there was a cold blue flame playing from under his brows, but he was not even breathing hard. "Now, let this end it. If you want to be my friend, let this end your comments on my personal affairs. If you do not want to be my friend, go on talking as you have been, and I will throw you out of the window."

This incident partially accounts for Holt's resolute refusal thereafter to advise Stainton. Advise him further George certainly did not, although among his club-fellows he expressed himself as extremely anxious to have it remembered that, should anything go wrong with Stainton, George Holt had predicted as much.

There remained, however, one person of importance to Stainton's project that still remained unconsulted and might have some opinion of more or less weight in regard to it. This was Muriel Stannard.

What she thought, or what she would ultimately come to feel about his plan, did occupy s.p.a.ce in Stainton's cogitations. Notwithstanding his romanticism, Stainton was not so blind to fact as to fail to see that the girl's mind was as virgin as her body. Indeed, her brain, so far as her education might be said to have developed that organ, was less advanced than the rest of her physique, and this not because she was not intelligent, for now that she was in the world at last he could see her daily hastening toward mental maturity, but because her pastors and masters had brought her up in the manner supposed to be correct for girls of her position. Critics of that manner might say that its directors proceed on the theory that, since life is full of serpents, the best way to train children for life is not to teach them to distinguish between harmless and venomous reptiles, but to keep them in such ignorance of the snakes that they will be sure not to know one when they see it. Yet Stainton, anything rather than a critic of the established order, found himself not displeased with this manifestation--or lack of it. He wanted youth; he wanted his long lost, long postponed romance, and chance had put both these things within his reach in the person of this dusky-eyed girl. Physically she was what her mother had been, mentally she could be trained to complete resemblance.

He would make of her what he conceived to be the best. And so he loved her.

To ascertain her opinion, to predetermine it, Stainton was now elaborately preparing. Beginning with that introductory motor ride, in which Stainton's cautious manipulation of the automobile seemed to Muriel's unspoiled delight a union of skill and daring, he went about his courtship in what he believed a frank and regular way; in a way that both Preston and Ethel Newberry considered absolutely committal; in a way that, consider it as she might, Muriel accepted with every evidence of girlish pleasure.

There were more motor drives, with the aunt now playing chaperon: a chaperon that conscientiously chaperoned as little as possible. There were small theatre parties, small suppers, small dinners. One or two mothers of daughters, who dared to be civil to Stainton, were shooed away, attacked by Ethel with all the brazen loyalty of a ponderous hen defending her chicks from the a.s.sault of a terrier. The Newberrys, as in duty bound, retaliated upon Stainton's theatres, dinners, and suppers with two teas and a luncheon. Stainton "came back at them," as George Holt phrased it, with more suppers, theatres, and dinners, the dramas always carefully selected to suit the immature condition of Muriel's soul; and so the whole courtship progressed along those conventional lines which lay the road to the altar over a plain of rich foods irrigated by vintage wines.

"Do you like this sort of thing?" Stainton heard himself asking the girl during one of the morning walks that he was permitted to take with her, unescorted, through Central Park.

"What sort of thing?" asked Muriel. "A day like this? I love it!"

It was a day worthy of being loved: one of those crisp autumnal days when New York is at its best and when the air, from the earth to the clear blue zenith, has a crystal clarity and a bracing tang that none other of the world's great cities possesses. Stainton felt as he used on some Rocky Mountain peak with the crests of lower eminences rolling away to the horizon like the waves of an inland sea below him; and Muriel, her cheeks glowing, walked by his side more like some firm-breasted nymph of those forests than a child of modern days and metropolitan civilisation.

"Yes," said Stainton, "this is splendid. But I meant the whole thing: New York, the life here, the city."

"I love that, too," said Muriel.

To Stainton's ear the use of one's first Latin verb translated was not merely schoolgirl carelessness and want of variety of phrase; it was an accurate expression of her abounding capacity for intense affection, her splendid fortune of emotion and her equally splendid generosity in its disposal.

"So do I," he said. "You can't begin to know how much it means to me to get back here."

"From the West?" Her eyes were soft at this. "But the West must be so romantic."

"Scarcely that. It has its points, but romance is not one of them."

"Oh, but your life there was romantic." She nodded wisely. "I know," she said.

Stainton's smile was tenderly indulgent.