father said thoughtfully, "but it seems to me
to hold together. Isn't there any more of it?"

"Well, it was balanced like that, you see," Mary went on; "set for the
climax, like the springs in a French play, when I came along at just the
moment and with just the word, to topple it over. Being Paula, she
couldn't help doing exactly what she did. So, however it comes out, I
shall be the one person she won't be able to forgive."

She knew from the startled look he turned upon her that this last shot
had come uncannily close. She fancied she must almost literally have
echoed Paula's words. If she needed any further confirmation she would
have found it in the rather panicky way in which he set about trying to
convince her that she was mistaken, if not in the fact at least in the
permanence of it.

She insisted no further, made indeed no further attempt at all to carry
the theme along and though she listened and made appropriate replies when
they were called for, she let her wordless thought drift away to a dream
that it was Anthony March who shared this shade and sunshine with her and
that veiled blue horizon yonder. It was easier to do since her father had
drifted into a reverie of his own. They need not have lingered for they
had sufficiently talked away all possible grounds of misunderstanding,
even if they had not reconciled their disagreement.

It occurred to her to suggest that they go back, but she dismissed the
impulse with no more than a glancing thought. It was his burden, not
hers, that remained to be shouldered at the cottage and it might be left
to him to choose his own time for taking it up. Paula seldom came down
much before noon anyhow.

As for John Wollaston, he was very tired. Paula's volcanic moments always
exhausted him. He never could derationalize his emotions, cut himself
free; and while he felt just as intensely as she did, he had to carry the
whole superstructure of himself along on those tempestuous voyages. In
the mood Paula had left him in this morning, there was nothing in the
world that could have satisfied and restored him as did his daughter's
companionship. The peace of this wordless prolongation of their talk
together was something he lacked, for a long while, the will to break.

It was not far short of noon when they came back into the veranda
together. He had walked the last hundred yards, after a look at his
watch, pretty fast and after a glance into both the down-stairs rooms, he