"I hope you are not making a joke of it"--Mary-Clare's face
flushed--"but even if you are, I am going to tell you what I think. I
must, you know."

"That's awfully good of you"--Northrup became earnest--"but it doesn't
matter now, I am going away. Let us talk of something else."

Mary-Clare took this in silence. The only evidence of her surprise
showed in the higher touch of colour that rose, then died out, leaving
her almost pale.

"Then, there is all the more reason why I must tell you what I think,"
she said at last.

The words came like sharp detached particles; they hurt.

"We must talk about the book!"

And Northrup suddenly caught the truth. The book was their common
language. Only through that could they reach each other, understandingly.

"All right!" he murmured, and turned his face away.

"It's your woman," Mary-Clare began with a sharp catching of her
breath as if she had been running. "Your woman is not real."

Northrup flushed. He was foolishly and suddenly angry. If the book
must be brought in, he would defend it. It was all that was left to
him of this detached interlude of his life. He meant to keep it. It
was one thing to live along in his story and daringly see how close he
could come to revealment with the keen-witted girl who had inspired
him, but quite another, now that he was going, beaten from the field,
to have the book, _as_ a book, assailed. As to books, he knew his
business!

"You put _your_ words in your woman's mouth," Mary-Clare was saying.

"And whose words, pray, should I put there?" Northrup asked huskily.

"You must let her speak for herself."

"Good Lord!"

Mary-Clare did not notice the interruption. She was doing battle for
more than Northrup guessed. She hoped he would never know the truth,
but the battle must be fought if all the beautiful weeks of joy were
to be saved for the future. The idealism that the old doctor had
desperately hoped might save, not destroy, Mary-Clare was to prove
itself now.

"There are so many endings in life, that it is hard, in a book, to
choose just one. Why should there be an end to a book?" she asked.

The question came falteringly and Northrup almost laughed.

"Go on, please," he said quietly. "You think I've ended my woman by
letting her do what any woman in real life would do?"

"All women would not do what your woman does. Such women end men!"

This was audacious, but it caught Northrup's imagination.

"Go on," he muttered