was wrenched from his holding and flung violently
open and Maria Angelina appeared upon the threshold, a defiant little
image of war. Deadly pale, except for that scarlet stain across her
cheek, her eyes blazing, there was something so mortally honest in the
indignant anger that possessed her that Johnny Byrd unconsciously fell
back a step, and Barry Elder stood aside, his own gaze lit with concern
and wonder.

"I am despising you for a coward and a flirter," said Maria Angelina in
a low but exceedingly penetrative voice, and so intense was her command
of the situation that neither man found humor, then, in the misused
word.

"You make love to girls when you mean nothing by it--you get them lost
in the woods and then refuse the marriage that any gentleman, even an
indifferent gentleman, would offer! And then you behave like a savage.
You bully and try to force your way into the actual room of shelter with
me!"

"You see!" Johnny waved his hand helplessly at her and looked
appealingly at Barry for a gleam of masculine right-mindedness.
"She--she wanted me to stay out in the rain, Barry."

"But as it was, _she_ stayed out in the rain and you slept in the
shelter."

"She ran, I'm telling you. I couldn't chase her forever, could I? I
tried to track her as soon as it got a little light and I could see
where she'd been sliding and slipping along, and honestly, I've been
nearly bats with worry till I got a trace of her again back in the
woods."

Barry Elder turned towards the girl.

"And that's the whole story, Signorina? That's all there is to it?"

"All?" Maria Angelina echoed bewilderedly. She thought there was enough
and to spare. It seemed to her that she had related the destruction of
her lifetime.

She stopped. She would not cry again before Johnny Byrd. She called on
all her pride to keep her firm before him.

A queer change came over Barry Elder's expression. The light that seemed
to be shining in the back of his eyes was bright again. He looked at
Maria Angelina in a thoughtful silence, then he turned to Johnny Byrd.

"I don't think you know how serious a business this is in Italy," he
told him. "You know, there where a girl cannot even see a man alone----"

"Well, we don't need to cable it to Italy, do we?" Johnny demanded in
disgust. "It isn't going to spill any beans here. But it would look
fine, wouldn't it, if I came back to the Lodge yelling to marry her?"

"Right you are. That is it, Signorina