.

"Get your hat and we'll go over to the lake. I know a nice place not far,
an open field right at the edge of the bluff with one big tree to make it
shady. At this hour of the morning we are sure to have it all to
ourselves."

He said as they walked along, "I've no reproaches for you. Not this
morning. I've thought over a lot of ground since four o'clock."

He said nothing more to the point until they reached the spot which Mary
had selected as their destination--it lived up handsomely to all her
promises--and settled themselves under the shade of the big tree.

"I suppose," he added then, "that I ought to forgive Whitney and Hood.
Their intentions were the best and kindest, of course. But I find that
harder to do."

He sat back against the trunk of the tree, facing out over the lake;
she disposed herself cross-legged on the grass near by just within
reaching distance. She offered him her cigarette case but he declined.
Of late years, since his marriage to Paula, he had smoked very little.
As a substitute, now, he picked up a forked bit of branch, and began
whittling it.

"I'm as much to blame as they are," she said, presently. "More, really.
Because, if I hadn't procrastinated-o-ut of cowardice, mostly,--until
yesterday, when she was half-way over the edge, it might never have come
to Maxfield Ware at all. After the situation had dramatized itself like
that, there was only one thing she could do. Of course, they didn't
foresee that five years' contract, any more than I did."

He nodded assent, though rather absently to this. "I'm not much
interested in the abstract ethics of it," he said. "It's disputable, of
course, how far any one can be justified in making a major interference
in another's life; one that deprives him of the power of choice. That's
what you have done to me--the three of you. If the premises are right,
and the outcome prosperous, there's something to be said for it. But in
this case ..."

"They aren't mistaken, are they, dad? Wallace and Mr. Whitney?--Or Doctor
Steinmetz?"

"Why, it's reasonable to suppose that Whitney understands my financial
condition better than I do. I mean that. It's not a sneer. But what he
and Hood don't allow for is that I've never tried to make money.
They've no idea what my earning power would be if I were to turn to and
make that a prime consideration. A year of it would take me out of the
woods, I think."

She waited, breathless, for him to deal with the thi