ll have dinner with you
because I'm as lonely as can be; my people, like yours, are out of town,
and I _do_ understand though I cannot say just how I do. One thing I
want you to promise: You will never, under any circumstances, try to
find out more about me than I freely give. Now or--ever! When I
disappear, I want really to be safe from intrusion."

Raymond promised, and so they set out on the Sun Road.

CHAPTER XVII

"_It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy
in solitude to live after our own._"

The trouble with the Sun Road is this: one is apt to be blinded by the
glare.

In their solitude, the solitude of a big city, Raymond and Joan trod the
shining way with high courage.

This was romance in an age when romance was supposed to be dead! Here
they were, they two, nameless--for they decided upon remaining
so--living according to their own codes; feeling more and more secure,
as time passed, that they were safe and were wisely enjoying what so
easily might have been lost had they been limited in faith.

"It's the line in our hands!" Raymond declared. "It means something, all
right. Think what we must have missed had we been unjust to each other
and ourselves."

Joan nodded.

The sun and the dust of the pleasant highway had blinded her completely
by the end of a week.

Patricia was a missing quantity most of the time. Patricia had taken to
the Sun Road, also, but with her eyes wide open. If Patricia ever turned
aside it would be because she knew the danger, not because she did not.

She never explained her absences nor her private affairs to Joan. When
she did appear at Sylvia's studio she was quiet and nervous.

"It's the heat," she explained. "I'm not hot, but I cannot get enough
air to breathe."

Meanwhile, Sylvia was basking in success and cool breezes on the
Massachusetts coast. Her letters had the tang of the sea.

And Raymond was always on hand, now, at the dinner hour. He was like a
boy, and took great pride in his knowledge of just the right places to
eat. Quiet, but not too quiet; good food, and, occasionally, good music,
and if the night was not too hot, a dance with Joan which set his very
soul to keeping time.

"Gee!" he said, after their first dance; "I wonder what you are, anyway?
Do you do everything--to perfection?"

Joan twinkled.

"Every man must decide that for himself," she replied with a charming
turn of her head.

"Every--man?" Raymon