"Those Wollastons can certainly dance," Sylvia remarked to her brother.

"I wonder they'll have anything to do with us. Let's just watch them for a minute.--Here, we'll turn the piano around so Mr. March can see, too."

It was queer, Mary reflected, how easy it was for her and also, she was sure, for her lover, to acquiesce in a spending of the hours like that; how little impatient she was of the presence of these others that kept them apart. She gave no thought to any maneuver, practicable or fantastic, for stealing away with him, not even when, as the party broke up for the night it became evident that chance was not going so to favor them.

She realized afterward that there had been something fact.i.tious about her tranquillity. What he had said in the moment before their first embrace had been on that same note. He had been afraid to touch her for fear that--as in a fairy story, or a dream,--she wouldn't be there. All that afternoon and evening, despite an ineffable security in their miracle, she had walked softly and so far as the future was concerned, avoided trying to look.

Something in his gaze when he said good night to her, gave her a momentary foreboding, though she told herself on the way up to the tent she was to share with Sylvia that this was nothing but the scare that always comes along with a too complete happiness.

But in the morning when her aunt told her that March had gone, she realized that it had been more than that.

It was in the presence of the others who had gathered in the apple house for breakfast that she heard the news, and this was perhaps a mercy; for the effort she had to make to keep from betraying herself rallied her forces and prevented a rout.

To the others his having gone like that seemed natural enough,--likably characteristic of him, at any rate. In his note to Miss Wollaston he had merely said that he realized that he must be off and wished to make the most of the cool of the morning. He hoped she would understand and pardon his not having spoken of his intention last night.

"It's the crush Sylvia had on him that accounts for that," Graham observed. "He was afraid of the row she'd make if he let on."

Sylvia's riposte to this was the speculation that Mary had scared him away, but one could see that her brother's explanation pleased her.

"Anyhow," she concluded, "he was good while he lasted."

What held Mary together was the obvious fact that none of them saw--no more than they had seen--anything. Not one curious or questioning glance was turned her way. A sense she was not until later able to find words for, that she was guarding something, his quite as much as her own, from profaning eyes, gave her the resolution it needed to carry on like that until she could be alone. Naturally,--or at all events plausibly--alone.

She wouldn't run away from anybody.

Toward eleven o'clock chance befriended her. She hid herself in the old orchard, lay p.r.o.ne upon the warm gra.s.s, her cheek upon her folded forearms, and let herself go. She did not cry even now. Grief was not what she felt, still less resentment.

She was lonely as she had never been before, and frightened by her loneliness. All the familiar things of her life seemed far away, unreal.

She wanted a hand to hold;--his--oh, one of his!--until she could find her way into a path again.

She had known, she reflected,--somewhere in the depths of her she had known--from the first moment of their meeting, that he would go away.

This was why she had been so careful not to look beyond the moments as they came; not to tempt Nemesis by asking nor trying for too much.

There happened to be, rather uncannily, a genuine proof that this was true. While she had been still dazed with that first look of his, there in the oak shade at the edge of the field, she had said that it was like the first act of _Le Chemineau_. That had been speaking all but with the tongue of prophecy. Deeply as the story had impressed her when she heard it, she had spoken with no conscious sense of the likeness between that wayfarer--whom neither love nor interest nor security could tempt away from the open road which called him,--and Anthony March. It was an inner self that knew and found a chance to speak. It was that same self who had answered for her when he asked whether she wanted him to come to Ravinia.

He had come to his decision then, with just that nod of the head. And she, forlorn, was glad he had cast this temptation aside. That he was plodding now st.u.r.dily along his highway. She flushed with shame at the thought of him, ubiquitous among those egotists at Ravinia, enlisting their interest, reminding Paula how much she liked him.

Why had he not hated her for suggesting such a thing? He had loved her for it, she knew, because he understood the longing to comfort and protect him which lay behind it. But that sort of comfort was not for him. The torture of the unheard melodies, instead.

He did love her. This, utterly, she knew. His going away, even with no farewell at all, cast no flaw upon the miraculous certainty of that.

Their one unreserved embrace remained the symbol of it.

She pressed her hands to her face and with a long indrawn breath surrendered to the memory of it. It was hers--for always.

The family were sitting at dinner when she came down to the apple house, and after a rather startled look at her, demanded to know where she had been.

"Asleep in the orchard," she said. "And not altogether awake yet."

But she knew she must get away from them. The look she saw in Graham's face would have decided that.

CHAPTER XVIII

A CASE OF NECESSITY

She told Rush when they left the table, that she had some shopping to do in town for Paula and meant to go on the afternoon train. She was expected back at Ravinia to-morrow anyhow. Beyond trying to persuade her to let Pete drive her in he made no protest, but she could see that he was troubled about it and she wasn't much surprised to find Wallace Hood waiting on the station platform when her train got in.

She didn't, very much, mind Wallace. There was no appearance of his being there in the role of guardian because she wasn't considered safe to leave to herself. You could always trust Wallace to do a thing like that perfectly.

It was a great piece of luck for him he told her. He had called up Hickory Hill to congratulate John upon Paula's enormous success; had learned from Rush of Mary's visit and that she was even then on the way to Chicago. He had just dropped round at the station in the hope of being able to pick her up for dinner. She had some shopping to do he understood and he wouldn't detain her now.

"Oh, nothing that matters a bit," said Mary. "It was an excuse merely, for running away from Hickory Hill."

There was something to be said for a man like Wallace as a confidant. He was perfectly safe not to guess anything on his own account. He seemed touched by her candor and hugged her arm against his side as they walked along, a gesture of endearment such as he hadn't indulged in for half a dozen years.

"So if you have nothing better to do," she went on, "we can begin our evening now. Though I suppose I had better find, first, a place to sleep."

"Frederica Whitney's in town for a day or two, just for a flying visit to Martin. She'd be glad to take you in, I'm sure."

"Oh, I think not," said Mary. "Not if I can get anything with four walls at the Blackstone."

She thought from his glance at her that he attached some special significance to her unwillingness to go to the Whitney house and hastened to a.s.sure him this was not the case.

"Frederica's a dear. Only I just happen to feel like not being anybody's guest to-night. Oh, and I didn't mean you by that either."

"It's nice to be n.o.body in that sense," he said.

His next suggestion was that he get his car, start north up the sh.o.r.e with her, have dinner at one of the taverns along the road and deliver her in good season for a night's sleep in the cottage at Ravinia.

But this suggestion was declined rather more curtly.

"To-morrow is as soon as I want to go there," she said. "Pete's going over then to get father so I shall go on duty. But meanwhile I'll let him enjoy his holiday in peace."

He made no further demur to telephoning over to the Blackstone.

On his coming back presently with the news that he had a room for her, she said, "Then we've nothing on our minds, have we? Except finding a place for dinner that's quiet and--not too romantic. I _am_ glad you came to meet me."

She was quite sincere about this. It would have been ghastly she reflected, to have spent the evening alone in a hotel bedroom with her own thoughts, if those she had entertained on the train coming in were a fair sample.

He was being just as nice to her as possible. By his old-fashioned standards, no hotel was a proper place for a young girl to spend a night in alone. Yet beyond offering two alternative suggestions, he forbore trying to dissuade her. So when he chose the Saddle and Cycle as their anchorage for the evening, she endorsed his choice with the best appearance of enthusiasm she could muster, though she'd rather have gone to a place where three out of four of the other diners wouldn't in all probability be known to her.

Arriving, however, in the uncla.s.sified hour between tea and dinner, they found they had the place pretty much to themselves and settled down in a secluded angle of the veranda for a leisurely visit. They began on Paula, of course, her retrieved failure and her sensational success. How sorry Wallace was not to have been there for her "Nedda." (He didn't go in much for Sunday entertainments of any sort, Mary remembered.) Well, it had been just as splendid as everybody said it was. That was one thing, at any rate, that had been put beyond discussion. Even the pundits were, for the moment anyhow, silenced.

He was curious as to how the intimate details of this strange life she had a chance to observe, struck her. How she liked Paula's colleagues; to what extent the glamour evaporated when one was behind the scenes.

She satisfied him as well as she could, though her opportunities, she said, were a good deal narrower than he took them to be. She had, herself, so much to do as Paula's factotem that there wasn't much leisure for loafing about. And this launched her into a humorously exaggerated account of what was involved in being secretary, chauffeur and chaperon to a successful opera star. But she pulled up when she saw he was taking it seriously.