es were plainly visible to each other in the
radiance from the open door.

XXVIII.--A HIGH-HANDED AFFAIR

If she had not been standing in the doorway Juliet would have run away,
but she had to welcome Dr. Roger Barnes, a traveler whom she had not seen
for almost a year. Her presence, however, after one glad greeting, seemed
not to bother him much. He turned from her to Rachel, who had risen, and
took her outstretched hand in both his.

"It's been rather a long evening," he said, "wandering around and around
this place, waiting for the other man to go. I explored the orchard and
the willow path, and every familiar haunt. I had to refresh myself
occasionally by stealing up for a glimpse of your face between the vines.
But, somehow, that only made it harder to wait. I had to march myself off
again with my fists gripped tight in my pockets to keep them off that
fellow, eating you up with his eyes--confound him--you, who belong only to
me."

He did not smile as he said the last words, but stood looking eagerly at
her with a gaze that never faltered. She tried to draw her hands away; it
was useless. Juliet slipped off, knowing that neither of them would see
her go.

"Come down on the lawn with me," he said, but she resisted.

"Please stay here, Doctor Barnes," she said, "and please let me have my
hand. I can't talk so."

"You needn't talk--for a while," he answered. He sat down facing her. "At
six o'clock I found out you were here. At eight--as soon as I could get
away--I came out. I told you how I spent the evening. If I had needed
anything to sharpen my longing for you that would have done it--but I
think I had reached about the limit of what I could bear in that line
already. It has been one constant augmenting thirst for a draught that was
out of my reach. I shouldn't have kept my promise not to write you another
day after I had been here this time and heard--what I have heard,
Rachel."

She did not answer. Her face was turned away; she was very still. Only a
slightly quickened breathing, of which he was barely conscious, betrayed
to him that this was not listening of an ordinary sort.

"I shouldn't have said anything could make any difference with my feeling,
to strengthen it," he went on very quietly, after a while, "but I find it
has. I don't try to explain it to myself, except by the one thing I am
sure of--that Alexander Huntington was the noblest and most heroic of men,
and deserved to the full th