as he does--why, it struck me as the
best thing for yours truly to marry Dick for keeps."

"What?" Though Barney's voice was low, it had the effect of a startled
and savage roar. "And chuck us over-board?"

"Not at all. If I married Dick for keeps, I intended to pay you a lump
sum, or else a regular amount each year."

"No, you don't!" Barney cried in the same muffled roar.

"Perhaps not--I haven't decided," Maggie said evenly. "I've merely been
telling you, as you requested me, why I did as I did. I refused Dick,
and lied to you, so that I might have more time to think over what I
really wanted to do."

Instinctively she had counted on rousing Barney's jealousy in order to
throw him off the track of her real thoughts. She succeeded.

"I can tell you what you're going to do!" Barney flung at her with
fierce mastery. "You're not going to put over a sure-enough marriage
with any Dick Sherwood! When there's that kind of a marriage, I'm going
to be the man! And you're going to go right straight ahead with our old
plan! Dick'll propose again if you give him half a chance. And when he
does, you say 'yes'! Understand? That's what you're going to do!"

There was no safety in openly defying Barney. And as a matter of fact
what he had ordered was what, in the shifting currents of her thoughts,
the steady momentum of her old ambitions and purposes had been pushing
her toward. So she said, in her even voice:

"You waste such a lot of your good energy, Barney, by exploding when
there's nothing to blow up. That's exactly what I'd decided to do. Miss
Sherwood has asked me out to Cedar Crest to-morrow afternoon, and I'm
going."

Barney let go the hold he had kept upon her wrists, and the dark look
slowly lifted from his face. "Why didn't you tell a fellow this at
first?" he half grumbled. Then with a grim enthusiasm: "And when you
come back, you're going to tell us it's all settled!"

"Of course--if he asks me. And now suppose you two go away. You've given
me a headache, and I want to rest."

"We'll go," said Barney. "But there may be some more points about this
that we may want to talk over a little later to-night. So better get all
the rest you can."

But when they had gone and left her to the silence of her pretentious
and characterless suite, Maggie did not rest. She had made up her mind;
she was going to do as she had said. But there was still that same
turmoil within her.

Again she thought of Larry. But she woul