m come out right? He is sure of the
consulship?"

"Practically."

"You want to be assured of his taking it."

She did not answer; but her face lighted, as if to a new appeal. Jerome
followed her look along the path. Marshby himself was coming. He was no
weakling. He swung along easily with the stride of a man accustomed to
using his body well. He had not, perhaps, the urban air, and yet there
was nothing about him which would not have responded at once to a more
exacting civilization. Jerome knew his face,--knew it from their college
days together and through these annual visits of his own; but now, as
Marshby approached, the artist rated him not so much by the friendly as
the professional eye. He saw a man who looked the scholar and the
gentleman, keen though not imperious of glance. His visage, mature even
for its years, had suffered more from emotion than from deeds or the
assaults of fortune. Marshby had lived the life of thought, and,
exaggerating action, had failed to fit himself to any form of it. Wilmer
glanced at his hands, too, as they swung with his walk, and then
remembered that the professional eye had already noted them and laid
their lines away for some suggestive use. As he looked, Marshby stopped
in his approach, caught by the singularity of a gnarled tree limb. It
awoke in him a cognizance of nature's processes, and his face lighted
with the pleasure of it.

"So you won't marry me?" asked Wilmer, softly, in that pause.

"Don't!" said Mary.

"Why not, when you won't tell whether you're engaged to him or not? Why
not, anyway? If I were sure you'd be happier with me, I'd snatch you out
of his very maw. Yes, I would. Are you sure you like him, Mary?"

The girl did not answer, for Marshby had started again. Jerome got the
look in her face, and smiled a little, sadly.

"Yes," he said, "you're sure."

Mary immediately felt unable to encounter them together. She gave
Marshby a good-morning, and, to his bewilderment, made some excuse about
her weeding and flitted past him on the path. His eyes followed her, and
when they came back to Wilmer the artist nodded brightly.

"I've just asked her," he said.

"Asked her?" Marshby was about to pass him, pulling out his glasses and
at the same time peering at the picture with the impatience of his
near-sighted look.

"There, don't you do that!" cried Jerome, stopping, with his brush in
air. "Don't you come round and stare over my shoulder. It makes me
ner