ast, and then, "Don't think I deserted
you, Stephen my dear. Don't think ill of me. I couldn't come--I couldn't
come to you," and suddenly her face changed slowly and she began to
weep, my fearless playmate whom I had never seen weeping before; she
began to weep as an unhappy child might weep.

"Oh my Mary!" I cried, weeping also, and held out my arms, and we clung
together and kissed with tear-wet faces.

"No," cried Guy belatedly, "we promised Justin!"

But Tarvrille restrained his forbidding arm, and then after a second's
interval put a hand on my shoulder. "Come," he said....

And so it was Mary and I parted from one another.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

BEGINNING AGAIN

Sec. 1

In operas and romances one goes from such a parting in a splendid
dignity of gloom. But I am no hero, and I went down the big staircase of
Tarvrille's house the empty shuck of an abandoned desire. I was acutely
ashamed of my recent tears. In the centre of the hall was a marble
figure swathed about with yellow muslin. "On account of the flies," I
said, breaking our silence.

My words were far too unexpected for Tarvrille to understand. "The
flies," I repeated with an air of explanation.

"You're sure she'll be all right?" I said abruptly.

"You've done the best thing you can for her."

"I suppose I have. I have to go." And then I saw ahead of me a world
full of the tiresome need of decisions and arrangements and empty of all
interest. "Where the _devil_ am I to go, Tarvrille? I can't even get out
of things altogether...."

And then with a fresh realization of painful difficulties ahead: "I have
to tell this to my father. I've got to explain---- And he thought--he
expected----"

Tarvrille opened the half of the heavy front door for me, hesitated,
and came down the broad steps into the chilly grey street and a few
yards along the pavement with me. He wanted to say something that he
found difficult to say. When at last he did find words they were quite
ridiculous in substance, and yet at the time I took them as gravely as
he intended them. "It's no good quoting Marcus Aurelius," said
Tarvrille, "to a chap with his finger in the crack of a door."

"I suppose it isn't," I said.

"One doesn't want to be a flatulent ass of course," said Tarvrille,
"still----"

He resumed with an air of plunging. "It will sound just rot to you now,
Stratton, but after all it comes to this. Behind us is
a--situation--with half-a-dozen particula