st sheep in the fold, but let those who had other
sins hear them.

He flung himself away from her--out of the house. And for days he did
not come home. They kept the reason of his absence from Leila, and as
far as they could from Constance. But Mary went nearly wild with
anxiety, and she found in Gordon a strength and a resourcefulness on
which she leaned.

When Barry came back, he offered no further objections to their plans.
Yet they could see that he was consenting to his exile only because he
had no argument with which to meet theirs. He refused to resign from
the Patent Office until the last moment, as if hoping for some reprieve
from the sentence which his family had pronounced. He was moody,
irritable, a changed boy from the one who had hippity-hopped with Leila
on Constance's wedding night.

Even Leila saw the change. "Barry, dear," she said one evening as she
sat beside him in her father's library, "Barry--is it because you hate
to leave--me?"

He turned to her almost fiercely. "If I had a penny of my own, Leila,
I'd pick you up, and we'd go to the ends of the earth together."

And she responded breathlessly, "It would be heavenly, Barry."

He dallied with temptation. "If we were married, no one could take you
away from me."

"No one will ever take me away."

"I know. But they might try to make you give me up."

"Why should they?"

"They'll say that I'm not worthy--that I'm a poor idiot who can't earn
a living for his wife."

"Oh, Barry," she whispered, "how can any one say such things?" She
knelt on a little stool beside him, and her brown hair curled madly
about her pink cheeks. "Oh, Barry," she said again, "why not--why not
get married now, and show them that we can live on what you make, and
then you needn't go--away."

He caught at that hope. "But, sweetheart, you'd be--poor."

"I'd have you."

"I couldn't take you to our old house. It--belongs to Mary. Father
knew that Constance was to be married, so he tried to provide for Mary
until she married; after that the property will be divided between the
two girls. He felt that I was a man, and he spent what money he had
for me on my education."

"I don't want to live in Mary's house. We could live with Dad."

"No," sharply. Barry had been hurt when the General had seemed to
agree so entirely with Gordon. He had expected the offer of a place in
the General's office, and it had not come.

"If we marry, darling," he said,