"Has Madame heard anything from her, Padre?"

"No, I don't think so. But we've been frightfully busy of late, you understand."

"No, neither of you know," said Laurence, in a low voice. "You wouldn't know. Padre, I--don't look at me like that, please; I'm not ill. But, without reason--swear to you before G.o.d, without any reason whatever, that I can conjure up--she has thrown me over, jilted me--Mary Virginia, Padre! And I'm to forget her. _I'm to forget her, you understand?_ Because she can't marry me." He spoke in a level, quiet, matter of fact voice. Then laughter shook him like a nausea.

I laid my hand upon him. "Now tell me," said I, "what you have to tell me."

"I've really told you all I know," said Laurence. "Day before yesterday she sent for me. You can't think how happy it made me to have her send for me, how happy I've been since I knew she cared! I felt as if there wasn't anything I couldn't do. There was nothing too great to be accomplished--

"Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me--to tell me that she meant to break our engagement: _Mary Virginia_!

"I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her."

He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.

"And you said--?"

"I said," said Laurence simply, "that she was mine as much as I was hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me.

She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was.

Mary Virginia, Padre!

"I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why should I? She's--she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words, because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life.

Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got down to the level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent this.

"Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that, too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E."

The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.

"Well?" said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure.

I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet--

There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope. To find what I had found. I handed the note back, in silence.

"Oh, why, why, why?" burst out the boy, in a gust of acute torment.

"For G.o.d's sake, why? Think of her eyes and her mouth, Padre--and her forehead like a saint's--No, she's not false. G.o.d never made such eyes as hers untruthful. I believe in her. I've got to believe in her. I tell you, I belong to her, body and soul." He began to walk up and down the room, and his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over them. "I could forgive her for not loving me, if she doesn't love me and found it out, and said so. Women change, do they not? But--to take a man that loves her--and tear his living soul to shreds and tatters--

"If _she's_ a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to believe? Why should she do it, Padre--to me that love her? Oh, my G.o.d, think of it: to be betrayed by the best beloved! No, I can't think it. This isn't just any light girl: this is Mary Virginia!"

I put my hand on his shoulder. He is a head over me, and once again as broad, perhaps. We two fell into step. I did not attempt to counsel or console.

"Here I come like a whining kid, Padre," said he, remorsefully, "piling my troubles upon your shoulders that carry such burdens already. Forgive me!"

"I shouldn't be able to forgive you if you didn't come," said I. Up and down the little room, up and down, the two of us.

Came a light tap at the door. The b.u.t.terfly Man's head followed it.

"Didn't I hear Laurence talking?" asked he, smiling. The smile froze at sight of the boy's face. He closed the door, and leaned against it.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked, quickly. It did not occur to us to question his right to ask, or to wonder how he knew.

In a dull voice Laurence told him. He held out his hand for the note, read it in silence, and handed it back.

"What do you make of it?" I asked.

"Trouble," said he, curtly; and he asked, reproachfully, "Don't you know her, both of you, by this time?"

"I know," said Laurence, "that she has sent me away from her."

"Because she wants to, or because she thinks she has to?" asked John Flint.

"Why should she do so unless it pleased her?" I asked sorrowfully.

His eyes flashed. "Why, she's _herself!_ A girl like her couldn't play anybody false because there's no falseness in her to do it with. What are you going to do about it?"

"There is nothing to do," said Laurence, "but to release her; a gentleman can do no less."

John Flint's lips curled. "Release her? I'd hang on till h.e.l.l froze over and caught me in the ice! I'd wait. I'd write and tell her she didn't need to make herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough about her for the two of us, because she didn't trust me enough to tell me what her trouble was, so I could help her. That first and always I was her friend, right here, whenever she needed me and whatever she needed me for. And I'd stand by. What else is a man good for?"

"I believe," said I, "that John Flint has given you the right word, Laurence. Just hold fast and be faithful."

Laurence lifted his haggard face. "There isn't any question of my being faithful to her, Padre. And I couldn't make myself believe that she's less so than I. What Flint says tallies with my own intuition.

I'll write her to-night." He laid his hand on John Flint's arm.

"You're all right, Bughunter," said he, earnestly. "'Night, Padre."

Then he was gone.

"Do you think," said John Flint, when he had rejected every conjecture his mind presented as the possible cause of Mary Virginia's action, "that Inglesby could be at the bottom of this?"

"I think," said I, "that you have an obsession where that man is concerned. He is a disease with you. Good heaven, what could Inglesby possibly have to do with Mary Virginia's affairs?"

"That's what I'm wondering. Well, then, who is it?"

"Perhaps," said I, unwillingly, "it is Mary Virginia herself."

"Forget it! She's not that sort."

"She is a woman."

"Ain't it the truth, though?" he jeered. "What a peach of a reason for not acting like herself, looking like herself, being like herself!

She's a woman! So are all the rest of the folks that weren't born men, if you'll notice. They're women; we're men: and both of us are people.

Get it?"

"I get it," said I, annoyed. "Your att.i.tude, John Flint, is a vulgar plat.i.tude. And permit me to--"

"I'll permit you to do anything except get cross," said he, quickly.

The ghost of a smile touched his face. "Being bad-tempered, parson, suits you just about as well as plaid pants and a h.e.l.lo Bill b.u.t.ton."

"I am a human being," I began, frigidly.

"And I'm another. And so is Mary Virginia. And there we are, parson.