knew how
matters stood."

Logan looked a little baffled. He was ten years older than either of
them, but so many actual clashing things happening had never come his
way before. His ten years' advantage had been spent writing stylistic
essays, and such do not fit one for stepping down into the middle of a
lot of primitive young emotions. He felt suddenly helpless before
these passionate, unjust, emotional young people. He felt a little
forlorn, too, as if the main currents of things had been sweeping them
by while he stood carefully on the bank, trying not to get his feet
wet. A very genuine emotion of pity for Marjorie had brought him up
here, pity more mixed with something else than he had been willing to
admit. It was the first thing he had done for a long, long time that
was romantic and unconsidered and actual. And it appeared that, after
all, he wasn't needed. Concentration on the nuances of minor
fifteenth-century poets had unfitted him for being swept on, as these
had been, by the world-currents. They had married each other, pushed
by the mating instinct in the air--the world's insistence on marriage
to balance the death that had swept it. Now they were struggling to
find their balance against each other, to be decent, to be fair, to
make themselves and each other what they thought they ought to be. He
could see what they were doing and why much more clearly than they
could themselves. But he couldn't be a part of it--he had stood aside
from life too long, with his nerves and his passion for artistic
details and pleasures of the intellect.

But he bowed quietly, and smiled a little. He felt suddenly very tired.

"Certainly it shall go no farther," he assured her. "And I owe you an
apology for the trouble which I fear I have ignorantly brought upon
you. If there is anything I can say----"

She shook her head proudly, and Francis, fronting them both, made a
motion of negation, too.

"You must be tired," he added to his gesture. "Or would you care to
watch the dancers awhile?"

"No, I thank you," said Mr. Logan courteously in his turn. "If you
will tell me of some near-by hotel----"

"There's only this," explained Francis. "But I think your room is
ready by now. Miss O'Mara--I'll call her--will show you to it."

Peggy, summoned by a signal whistle from the ballroom, convoyed Logan
upstairs with abundant good-will and much curiosity. She had never
seen any one like him before, and took