a
tragic failure. The man was looking past her to the post-office
beyond, and the things Patsy had seemed to feel in his face suddenly
rose to the surface and revealed themselves with an instant's
intensity. Patsy followed the look over her shoulder and shrank away
perceptibly.

In the doorway of the office stood another man, younger and
more--pronounced. It could mean but one thing: Billy Burgeman had
lost his self-respect along with Marjorie Schuyler and had fallen in
with foul company.

There were natures that crumbled and went to pieces under distrust
and failure--natures that allowed themselves to be blown by passion
and self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity.
She had met a few of them in her life; but--thank God!--there were
only a few.

She found herself praying that she might not have come too late. Just
what she would do or say she could not tell; but she must make him
understand that he was not the arbiter of his own life, that in spite
of what he had found, there were love and trust and disinterested
kindness in the world, lots of it. Money might be a curse, but it was
a curse that a man could raise for himself; and a little lad who
could shovel snow for half a day to earn two white roses for a dead
friend was too fine to be lost out of life's credit-sheet.

She did not wait for any invitation; silently, with a white face, she
climbed into the car and sat with hands folded about the pilgrim
staff. It was as if she had taken him for granted and was waiting for
his compliance to her will. And he understood. He moved the starter,
and, as the motor began its chugging, he called out to the man in the
doorway:

"Better not wait for me. I seem to have a date with--a lady." There
was an unpleasant intonation on the last word.

"Please take a quiet road--where there will not be much passing,"
commanded Patsy.

She did not speak again until the town lay far behind and they were
well on that quiet road. Then she turned partly toward him, her hands
still clasped, and when she spoke it was still in the best of the
king's English--she had neither feeling nor desire for the intimacy
of her own tongue.

"I know it must seem a bit odd to have me, a stranger, come to you
this way. But when a man's family and betrothed fail him--why, some
one must--make it up--"

He turned fiercely. "How did you know that?"

"I--she--Never mind; I know, that's all. And I came, thinking maybe
you'd be gl