fter all, he had been right. How could he let her go to some man whose
arms would furnish an inviolable sanctuary? He shook his head. No such
thing existed. Hadn't he, indeed, foreseen exactly this situation, and
hadn't he told himself it couldn't close the approach to his pursuit?
But he had never reconnoitred that road. Now he must find it no matter
how forbidding the places it might thread. So he released her. She
raised her hands to her face.

"You hurt!" she whispered. "Oh, how you hurt!"

"Please tell me who it is."

She turned, and, her hands still raised, started across the terrace. He
followed.

"Tell me!"

She went on without answering. He watched her go, suppressing his angry
instinct to grasp her again that he might force the name from her. He
shrugged his shoulders. Since she had probably timed her attack on him
with a general announcement, he would know soon enough. He could fancy
those in the house already buzzing excitedly.

"I always said she'd marry so and so;" or, "She might have done
better--or worse;" perhaps an acrid, "It's high time, I should
think"--all the banal remarks people make at such crises. But what
lingered in George's brain was his own determination.

"She shan't do it. Somehow I'll stop her."

He glanced over the garden, dully surprised that it should retain its
former aspect while his own outlook had altered as chaotically as it had
done that day long ago when he had blundered into telling her he loved
her.

He turned and approached the house to seek this knowledge absolutely
vital to him but from which, nevertheless, he shrank. Two names slipped
into his mind, two disagreeable figures of men she had recently chosen
to be a good deal with.

George acknowledged freely enough now that he had taken his later view
of his employer from an altitude of jealousy. Blodgett offered a
possibility in some ways quite logical. With war finance he worked
closer and closer to Old Planter. He had become a familiar figure at
Oakmont. George had seen Sylvia choose his companionship that afternoon,
had watched her a little while ago make him happy with her smiles; yet
if she could tolerate Blodgett why had she never forgiven George his
beginnings?

Dalrymple was a more likely and infinitely less palatable choice. He was
good-looking, entirely of her kind, had been, after a fashion, raised at
her side; and Sylvia's wealth would be agreeable to the Dalrymple bank
account. George had had suff