Rush then had a long talk by telephone with his father at Ravinia. Mary didn't know, of course, what they had said, beyond that John had promised to come down immediately after lunch, but she got the idea that the professional medical att.i.tude had been one of less alarm than the amateur one. Mary confessed to March, with a flicker of ironic amus.e.m.e.nt, that she had supported this lighter view so successfully that, a little before noon, Rush had confided to her his wish--if she were perfectly sure she didn't need him--to take the one o'clock train to Lake Geneva. He and Graham were still expected there for the week-end and on a good many accounts it would be well if he didn't fail them. He dreaded going, of course, but he felt he could meet the situation better on the ground whatever turned up. He could wait for the three o'clock train, but this was the one Mr. Stannard always took and he'd like to get in a talk with Sylvia first. She was a great pal of her brother's and might well have some real information about He'd have Pete's wife come in and look after Mary--get lunch and so on. And father would be down about two.

March thought the forlorn smile with which she told him this the most heart-breaking thing he had ever seen. d.a.m.n Rush! d.a.m.n all the sentimentalists in the world. Dressing up their desires in altruistic clothes. Loving themselves in a lot of crooked mirrors!

The rest of the story told itself in very few words. John Wollaston telephoned, about three, from Ravinia, to say that Paula wasn't well--meant to sing to-night as she was billed to do (she took great pride in never disappointing her audiences)--but very much wanted him at hand through the ordeal. If Mary was feeling as much better as her voice sounded would she mind his not coming until to-morrow morning.

She'd a.s.sured him, of course, that she wouldn't mind a bit. Aunt Lucile hadn't arrived yet but she would be coming any minute now. Rush had been making a great fuss about nothing, anyway. She did not volunteer the information that Rush had already gone to Lake Geneva.

At five o'clock a telegram, addressed to Rush, had come from Miss Wollaston. Pete had broken one of the springs of the big car and had had to go to Durham for another. She hoped Rush and his father would be able to take care of Mary until to-morrow morning when she would arrive with one of the servants and take charge.

That cleared the board. To-morrow they would descend upon her with their fussy attentions, their medical solemnities, their farcical search for something--for anything except the truth they wouldn't let her tell--to account for her nervous breakdown. But for a dozen hours she was, miraculously, to be let alone, with blessed open s.p.a.ces round her. No need for any frantic haste. Plenty of time. The whole of that hot still summer night.

And then, at six o'clock, a man named James Wallace had telephoned! And Jennie MacArthur had decided to drop in that evening for a visit with Sarah! Fate had played its part; given March his chance.

"So that's why you decided to go away," he said.

He had been nerving himself during a long slow silence for that. He could almost as easily have struck her a blow, and indeed the effect of it was precisely that. But though she tried to shrink away he held her tighter and went on. "I don't believe there's anything in the whole picture now that I don't see and understand. But--but the way out ... Oh, Mary darling, it isn't the one you are trying to take. There's happiness for both of us if you'll take the other way--with me."

She was struggling now to get free from his hands. "No!" she gasped wildly. "I won't do that. I'll do anything--_anything_ else rather than that. Let me go now."

But he held her fast. Presently she relaxed and lay back panting in her chair. "Won't you please let me go?" she pleaded. "You haven't understood at all if you don't see that you must. Oh, but you do understand! You've comforted me ... I didn't think there could be any comfort like that. Let me go now--in peace. Don't ask the other. I've spoiled things for everybody else, but I won't for you. I couldn't endure that."

All the pleas, the arguments, the convincing phrases which he had been mustering while she talked to him so contentedly, to convince her of the truth, the blinding truth that he wanted her now for his wife, that life no longer seemed a possible thing for him upon any other terms--all that feeble scaffolding of words was, to his despair, swept now clean away in the very torrent of his pa.s.sion. He could do nothing for a while but go on holding her. At last, words burst from him.

"I won't let you go. Not alone. Wherever you go, I'll go with you."

She looked up, staring into his face and he saw an incredulous surmise deepen into certainty. She had seen, heard in that cry of his, the truth--that he understood what she meant to do. Then her face contorted itself like a child's, ineffectually struggling to keep back tears, and she broke down, weeping.

That broke the spell that had fallen upon him. He took her up, carried her over to the big armchair and sat down with her in his arms.

His own terror, which had never more than momentarily receded since she had first spoken to him from the doorway, was, he realized, gone; replaced by an inexplicable thrilling confidence that he had won his victory. He didn't speak a word.

The tempest was soon spent. It was a matter only of minutes before the sobbing ceased. But for a long while after she was quiet, all muscles relaxed, she lay just as he held her, a soft dead weight like a sleeping child. He wondered, indeed, if she had not fallen asleep and finally moved his head so that he could see her eyes. They were open, though, and at that movement of his she stirred, sighed and sat erect.

"I think I would have dropped off in another minute," she said. Then she put her hands upon his shoulders. "I won't do that. I promise, solemnly, I won't do what--what we both thought I meant to do. I don't believe I could now, anyway. Now that the nightmare is gone."

She smiled then and bent down and kissed him. "But I won't do the other thing either, my dear. I'll find some other way. Really go to Omaha perhaps. But I won't marry you. You see why, don't you?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "I can tell you exactly why. You don't want to take away my freedom. You want me to be a sort of--what was that opera you spoke about at Hickory Hill?--_Chemineau_. Doing nothing but what I please. Wandering off wherever I like." He smiled. "Mary, dear, do you realize that you're proposing to deal with me exactly as Graham Stannard would have dealt with you? Trying to make an image of me?"

She started from his knees, retreated a pace or two and turned and confronted him.

"That's not true," she protested. "That can't possibly be true!"

He did not answer. He had plenty of arguments with which to establish the parallel, his mind was aflame with phrases in which to plead his cause with her. Somehow they wouldn't come to his tongue. It didn't occur to him that fatigue had anything to do with this. He was filled with a sudden fury that he could not talk to her.

She had turned away, restlessly, and moved to one of the dormer windows.

Following her with his eyes he saw the dawn coming.

He rose stiffly from his chair. "I guess I had better take you home now," he said.

She nodded and got her hat. When he found her at the door after he had put out the lamp she clung to him for a moment in the dark and he thought she meant to speak, but she did not.

He helped her down the irregular shaky stair and then, along the gray cool empty street he walked with her toward the brightened sky.

She said, at last, "Graham wouldn't let me tell him what the real me was like. Tell me the truth about the real you."

"There isn't much to tell. I guess I'm pretty much like any one else when it comes down to--to ... I don't want to go on, alone. I want to be woven in with you. I want..."

He stood still in a vain effort to make the words come. "I can't talk!"

he cried, and his voice broke in a sob.

"You needn't," she said; and pressing his hand against her breast she led him on again. She was trembling and her hand was cold.

Nothing more was said between them, all the way. But when they reached her door and managed to open it she stood for a moment peering through the dusk into his face.

"If it's true..." she said. "If you really want a home and a wife--like me... Oh, yes, I know it's true!"

CHAPTER XXVI

JOHN ARRIVES

Two or three hours after March and Mary came to the Dearborn Avenue house that Sunday morning, a little before eight o'clock to be precise, John Wollaston, deterred by humane considerations from ringing the door-bell, tried his latch-key first and found it sufficient. Rather surprisingly since his sister was particular about bolts and chains. But this mild sensation was engulfed the next moment in clear astonishment when he encountered in the drawing-room doorway, Anthony March.

The piano tuner was coatless and in his socks. Evidently it was no less recent an event than the sound of the latchkey which had roused him from sleep.

"Oh," he said. "It's you, sir." And added as he came a little wider awake, "I'm very glad you've come."

John detected a reservation of some sort in this afterthought; faintly ironic perhaps. There was, at any rate, a conspicuous absence of any implication that his presence was urgently needed just then, or eagerly waited for.

He replied with an irony a little more marked, "It's an unexpected pleasure to find you here. They're wanting you rather badly up at Ravinia these days, I understand."

March nodded, cast a glance in the direction of the stairs and led the way decisively into the drawing-room. His pantomime made it clear that he did not wish the rest of the slumbering household aroused. Considerate of him, of course, and all that, but the decisiveness of the action--as if he somehow felt himself in charge, despite the arrival of his host--roused in John a faint hostility.

He followed nevertheless. He saw at once where his unaccountable visitor had made his bed. A big cane davenport had been dragged into the bay window, its velvet cushions neatly stacked on the piano bench, and the composer's coat, rolled with his deftness of experience, had served him for a pillow. Not a bad bed for such a night as this that John himself had sweltered through so unsuccessfully. Probably the coolest place in the house, right by those open south windows. But all, the same ...

"Couldn't Rush do better for you than that?" he said. "There must be a dozen beds in the house."

"Rush isn't here," March answered. "I believe he went to Lake Geneva yesterday, for over Sunday."

John Wollaston felt the blood come up into his face as the conviction sprang into his mind that Lucile wasn't here, either. She'd never have left the front door unbolted. She'd never have permitted a guest, however explicit his preferences, to sleep upon the cane davenport in the drawing-room with his coat for a pillow.

It was as if March had followed his train of thought step by step.

"Miss Wollaston isn't here either," he said. "She was detained by a broken spring in the car. I believe she expects to arrive this morning."