."

A second time did Devar look at his friend, but, being really a
good-natured and sympathetic person, he repressed the imminent cry of
amazement. Somehow, he realized the one spear-thrust which had pierced
Curtis's armor. It was hateful that such a man should be told he had
married Hermione for her money. It was hateful to think that this
might be said of him in the years to come. It was even possible that
she herself might come to believe it of him, and John Delancy Curtis's
knight-errant soul shrank and cringed under the thought, even while the
memory of Hermione's first kiss of love was still hot on his lips.

CHAPTER XVII

WHEREIN JOHN AND HERMIONE BECOME ORDINARY MEMBERS OF SOCIETY

But the phase passed like a disturbing dream. Hermione herself laughed
the notion to scorn: and a ready opportunity for such effective
exorcism of an evil spirit was supplied by Devar's tact.

When the two young men reached the hotel Devar insisted that Curtis
should take Hermione for an hour's run in the park.

"Here's the car, and it's a fine morning, and you've got the girl.
What more do you want?" he cried. "If Uncle Horace and Aunt Louisa
show up before your return I'll take care of 'em. Now, who helps her
ladyship to put on her hat and fur coat--you or I?" That duty,
however, was discharged by a smiling and voluble maid named Marcelle
Leroux.

So it befell that when Brodie piloted his charges into Central Park
through Scholar's Gate, Curtis behaved like a man deeply in love but
gravely ill at ease, and Hermione, also in love, but afire with the
divine flame of womanly faith, and therefore serenely blind to any
possible obstacle which should thrust itself between her and the
beloved, saw instantly that something was wrong. Curtis was just the
type of man who would torture himself unnecessarily about a
consideration which certainly would not have rendered his inamorata
less desirable in the eyes of the average wooer. He knew that he had
waited all his life to meet Hermione--to meet her, and none other--and
the thought that, having found her, having snatched her, as it were,
from the sacrificial altar of a false god, he should now lose her, was
inflicting exquisite agony.

Happily, this girl-wife of his was adorably feminine, and she decided
without inquiry that she was the cause of his melancholy.

"Tell me, John," she said suddenly. "I am brave. I can bear it."

The unexpected words stirred him from