as coolly as if it were not three o'clock in the morning, on
an unfrequented road.

"The most of the step is taken. You haven't anything to do but just go
on as you are--no packing or walking or letter-writing or anything of
the sort. Simply stay here in the car with me and end at the place in
Canada, live there and let me be around more or less. If there's
anything you want at home that Lucille has forgotten----"

"Knowing Lucille, there probably is," said Marjorie.

"----we'll write her and get it. . . . Well?"

Marjorie took a long breath, tried to be very wide-awake and firm, and
fell silent, thinking.

She was committed, for one thing. People would think it was all right
and natural if she went on with Francis, and be shocked and upset and
everything else if she didn't. Cousin Anna Stevenson would write her
long letters about her Christian duty, and the office would be
uncomfortable. And Lucille--well, Lucille was a blessed comfort. She
didn't mind what you did so long as it didn't put her out personally.
She at least--but Lucille had packed the bag! And you couldn't go and
fling yourself on the neck of as perfidious a person as _that_.

And--it would be an adventure. Francis was nice, or at least she
remembered it so; a delightful companion. He wasn't rushing her. All
he wanted was a chance to be around and court her, as far as she could
discover. True, he was appallingly strange, but--it seemed a
compromise. And she had always liked the idea of Canada. As for
eventually staying with Francis, that seemed very far off. It did not
seem like a thing she could ever do. Being friends with him she might
compass. Of course, you couldn't say that it was a fair deal to
Francis, but he was bringing it on himself, and really, he deserved the
punishment. For of course, Marjorie's vain little mind said
irrepressibly to itself, he would be fonder of her at the end of the
try-out than at the beginning. . . . And then a swift wave of anger at
him came over her, and she decided on the crest of it. She would never
give in to Francis's courtship. He wasn't the sort of man she liked.
He wasn't congenial. She had grown beyond him. But he deserved what
he was going to get. . . . And she spoke.

"It isn't fair to you, Francis, because it isn't going to end the way
you hope. But I'll go to Canada with you . . ."

For a moment she was very sorry she had said it, because Francis forgot
himself and caught