asked, trying to fumble her way to
honesty.

"No, Joan. But it's very late. You ought to be in bed."

"Didn't you think that I should miss you while you've been away?"

"No, Joan. Look. It's half-past two. A kid like you ought to have been
asleep hours ago." He went over to the door.

"I'm not a kid--I'm not" she burst out.

He was too tired to be surprised. He had not forgotten how she had
hidden behind her youth. He couldn't understand her mood. "I must get
to bed," he said, "if you don't mind. I must be up pretty early. Run
along, Joany."

He couldn't have hurt her more awfully whatever he had said. To be
treated like a naughty girl! But it served her right, and she knew it.
Her plea had come back like a boomerang.

"Well, have a good time," she said, with her chin high. "I shall see
you again some day, I suppose," and she went out.

It was no use. She had lost him--she had lost him, just as she had
discovered that she wanted him. There was a girl with a white face and
red lips and hair that came out of a bottle. Martin watched her go and
shut the door, and stood with his hands over his face.

VIII

Mr. and Mrs. George Harley had made an appointment to meet at half-past
eleven sharp on the doorstep of the little house in Sixty-seventh
Street. Business had interrupted their honeymoon and brought them
unexpectedly to New York. Harley had come by subway from Wall Street to
the Grand Central and taken a taxicab. It was twelve o'clock before he
arrived. Nevertheless he wore a smile of placid ease of mind. His
little wife had only to walk from the Plaza, it was true, but he knew,
although a newly married man, that to be half an hour late was to be
ten minutes early.

At exactly five minutes past twelve he saw her turn off the Avenue, and
as he strolled along to meet her, charmed and delighted by her
daintiness, proud and happy at his possession of her, he did a thing
that all wise and tactful husbands do--he forced back an irresistible
desire to be humorous at her expense and so won an entry of approval
from the Recording Angel.

If they had both been punctual they would have seen Martin go off in
his car to drive the girl who had had no luck to the trees and the wild
flowers and the good green earth.

Joan's mother, all agog to see the young couple who had taken life into
their own hands with the sublime faith of youth, had made it her first
duty to call, however awkward and unusual the hour. Her