e open door. Then she swept up the hearth, singing as she swept,
and tidied the arrangement of books, bait and tobacco upon the mantel,
fingering them with shy curiosity.

"Maria Angelina!" said a voice at the doorway and Maria Angelina turned
with a catch at her heart.

It had taken Barry Elder a long time to retrace those steps of his.

Twice he had stopped in deep thought. Once he had pulled out a
leather folder from his pocket and after regarding its sheaf of
papers had sat down upon a stone and deliberately opened a long,
much-creased-from-handling letter. It was dated a week before and it was
headed York Harbor. It concluded with an invitation--and a question.

After reading that letter Barry remained sunk in thought for a time
longer than the reading had taken.

All of his past was in that letter--and a great deal of his future in
that invitation.

Then he went deeper into his pocketbook and took out a small photograph.
It was the one she had given him when he went to France--when she had
been willing to inspire but not to bless him. For a long time, soberly,
he gazed at the picture it disclosed, at the fair presentment of
delightful youth.

Never had he looked at that picture in just that way. He had known
longing before it, and he had known bitterness quite as misplaced and
quite as disproportionate.

It affected him now in neither way.

It was a beautiful picture--it was the picture of a beautiful young
woman. He acknowledged the beauty with generous appreciation. But he
felt no inclination to go on staring, moonstruck, upon it; neither did
he feel the impulse to thrust it hurriedly out of sight, as something
with power to rend.

It neither troubled him nor invited--though the girl was beautiful
enough, he continued to admit. So were her pearls--and neither were
genuine, thought Barry with more humor than a former adorer has any
right to feel.

Then he amended his thought. Something of her was real--the invitation
in that letter--the inclination that he had always known she felt. It
was just because it was a genuine impulse in her that he realized how
strong was the calculation in her that had always been able to keep the
errant inclination in check.

And even when he was going to war . . . She had envisaged her future so
shrewdly--either as wife or widow, he was certain, that she had given
the photograph and not her hand.

Later, Bob Martin became unavailable. And he, himself, acquired an
in