ons of our great adventure were bringing back the
color to her cheeks and the sparkle to her eyes. I smiled at her.
"Don't be too cheerful," I said; "we might get ourselves suspected."

"Couldn't we just tell John that we had decided to go--and go?"

"Better not."

"I hate to deceive and play act and be underhanded."

"So do I--but--Lucy, darling, you're going to trust me in more
important things than this. I _think_ my way is best. We don't want
any more agonies and recriminations and scenes. _Do_ we?"

I took her in my arms and whispered, "It's only a few days now, but I
don't see how I can wait. I don't see how."

And she burrowed with her face between my cheek and shoulder, and
whispered back, "And I don't see how I can wait."

There was a little space of very tense silence, during which my eyes
roved to the little silver traveling-clock on the mantel, and then I
said in a voice that shook:

"I'd better get out before he comes back."

XXXI

My parents, loafing North, via Hot Springs, were delighted to see me.
As soon as courtesy to my mother made it possible, I got my father
aside, and told him that my real purpose in coming was to raise the
wind.

"I need a lot of money," I said; "sooner or later you'll know why. So
I may as well tell you."

My father's fine weather-beaten face of a country squire expressed an
interest at once frankly affectionate and tinged with a kind of
detached cynicism.

"I am going to run off with Lucy Fulton," I said.

"I supposed that was it," said my father, without evincing the least
surprise.

"You _did_?"

"Oh, we old fellows put an ear to the ground now and then," he
explained; "and sometimes sleep with one eye open. Punch's advice to
the young couple about to marry was 'Don't.' My advice to you and Lucy
is double don't. Why not give yourselves a year to think it all over,
as John Fulton so sanely and generously suggests?"

Astonishment at my father's superhuman knowledge of events must have
showed in my face. Still smiling with frank affection, he said, "John
put me in touch with the whole situation before he left Aiken. The
year of probation was my suggestion to him."

"But Lucy and I can't agree."

"Then you can't. Do you sail, fly, entrain, or row--and when?"

"We sail, father, next Wednesday."

"A week from today. I am profoundly sorry. It's very rough on Fulton,
just when he has closed with this Russian contract and is by way of
ge