ighted at
my wish to accompany him. We drove over in the motor in the flush of
the afternoon, Jerry blithe again, I silent, wondering at the
inexhaustible springs of youth, forgetting that it was merely May and
Jerry on his way to the woman he loved.

The house was full of guests for the week-end, but Marcia Van Wyck,
with an air of hospitality that quite took me aback, welcomed me
warmly, confessed herself much honored by this mark of my attention
and took me to see her garden. Oh, she was clever. Spring flowers,
youth, grace, the sweetness of the warm, scented paths, her symbolic
white frock to set the scene for innocence. But I understood her now.
Two could play at her game.

"It was wonderful of you to come, Mr. Canby," she purred. "So kind, so
neighborly."

"It's really a great pleasure, I'm sure," I said with a show of
gallantry. "A lovely spot! Blossoms. I wondered where you got them for
your cheeks."

She flashed a quick glance at me, wholly humorous.

"For that speech, you shall have a bud for your lapel." And she
plucked and fastened it, her face very close to mine. She gave me a
moment of intense discomfort which was only half embarrassment. She
had planned well. She was a part of the purity and sweetness of this
lovely summer garden. Guile and she were miles asunder.

"Thanks," I muttered, smelling the blossom with some ostentation.

"Then we're going to be friends?" she queried archly.

"I'm not aware that we were ever anything else," I replied easily.

"Come now, Mr. Canby. You know we haven't always understood each
other. I'm sure each of us has been frightfully jealous of the other.
Isn't it so?"

"Jealous! I? Of you, Miss Van Wyck?"

"Don't let's misunderstand again. I'm frightfully cheerful this
afternoon. It mightn't happen again for weeks. I couldn't quarrel with
fate itself. You did want Jerry to carry your doctrines out into the
world with him, didn't you?"

"I'm not aware--"

"And I discovered him far too stodgy to endure. It wasn't so much that
your philosophy and mine differed as the difference they made in
Jerry. And so we clashed. I won."

I was silent.

"Didn't I, Mr. Canby?" she persisted, in her gentlest tone.

"Jerry is out of my hands, Miss Van Wyck," I managed coolly.

"And in mine?"

"Yes, in yours," after a pause.

She laughed softly.

"What do you suppose I'm going to do with him?"

The glamour of youth in a garden, her rare humor and the cloudless
day--I