vivid young wheat beyond--she said:

"Howat, I am certain that things are going badly with Jimmy. He wrote to
me willingly in the winter, but twice since then he hasn't answered a
letter."

He suppressed a sharp, recurrent concern. "It's that Harriet," he told
her, capitally diffident. "You are stupid to keep it up. What chance
would he have had answering her letters married to you?"

"This is different," she replied confidently. He saw that he had been
wrong--nothing had changed, lessened. Howat swore silently. That
damnable episode might well spoil her entire existence. But he wisely
avoided argument, comment. A warm current of air, fragrant with apple
blossoms, caught the ribbon-like smoke of his cigarette and dissipated
it. She smiled with half-closed eyes at the new flowering of earth. Her
expression grew serious, firm. "I think we'd better go out to
Harrisburg," she remarked, elaborately casual, "and see Jimmy for
ourselves."

He protested vehemently, but--from experience in that quarter--with a
conviction of futility. "She'll laugh at you," he told Mariana. "Haven't
you any proper pride?" She shook her head.

"Not a scrap. It's just that quality in Jim that annoyed me, and spoiled
everything. I'd cook for them if it would do any good." Irritation
mastered him. "This is shameful, Mariana," he declared. "Don't your
position, your antecedents, stand for anything? If I had Jasper Penny
here I would tell him what I thought of his confounded behaviour!" He
rose, and walked the length of the porch and back.

"The first part of next week?" she queried. "I won't go a mile," he
stated, in sheer bravado. "Then," said Mariana, "I must do it alone." He
muttered a period in which the term hussy was solely audible. "Which of
us?" she asked, calmly. "Actually," he exploded, "I feel sorry for that
Harriet. I sympathize with her. She got the precious James fair enough,
and the decent thing for you is to keep away."

"But I'm not decent either," Mariana continued. "If you could know what
is in my head you'd recognize that. I seem to have no good qualities. I
don't want them, Howat," her voice intensified; "I want Jim."

He was completely silenced by this desire persisting in spite of every
established obstacle. It summoned an increasing response at the core of
his being. Such an attitude was, more remotely, his own; but in him it
had been purely negative, an inhibition rather than a challenge; he had
kept out of life inste