th Cynthia sleeping down
there too--and the little bachelor. Think twice, Red, before you decide
on this arrangement."

He glanced at the wall between the two rooms. "Where would be a good
place to have the door cut through? What's behind that curtain? A
clothes-press?"

He advanced to the curtain and swept it aside. It hung in a doorway, and
was of a heavy gray material, with an applied border of the gray-and-rose
chintz. As he moved it light burst through from the other side of the
wall, and Burns found himself looking into the "bachelor's room" next
door.

He turned, with a shout of laughter. "You witch!" he cried, and returning
to his wife laid a hand on either richly colouring cheek, gently forcing
her face upward, so that he could look directly into it. "You meant it,
all the while!"

"Don't be too sure of that. If this room looks like me, the one
downstairs certainly looks like you. I don't want to take you out
of your proper environment."

"My environment!" he repeated, and laughed. "What is it, now, do you
think? Not bachelor apartments, still?"

But she persisted, gently. "Keep the downstairs room, dear, just as it
is. Don't make it a public room, except for necessity. Sometimes you'll
be glad to take refuge there, just as you're used to doing. Leave those
three pictures on your walls, and look at them often, as you've always
done. And be sure of this, Red: I shall never be hurt when you show me
that you want to fight something out alone, there. It must be your own
and private place, just as if I hadn't come."

Sober now, he stood looking straight down into her eyes, which gave him
back his look as straightly. After a minute he spoke with feeling:

"Thank you, dearest. And bless you for understanding so well. At the same
time I'm confident you understand one thing more: That by leaving a man
his liberty you surely hold him tightest!"

CHAPTER III

BURNS DOES HIS DUTY

"Excuse me for coming in on you at breakfast," Martha Macauley, Ellen's
sister and next-door neighbour, apologized, one morning in late May. "But
I wanted to catch Red before he got away, and I saw, for a wonder, that
there was no vehicle before the door."

"Come in, come in," urged Burns, while Ellen smiled a greeting at her
sister, a round-faced, fair-haired, energetic young woman, as different
as possible from Ellen's own type. "Have a chair." He rose to get it for
her, napkin in hand. "Will you sit down and try one of