were the words he found. "I'm willing. That is, I'm willing in principle. Only"--he stammered on--"only I don't want you to go roaming the country by yourself. Why not let me go? I could go away for a while, and you could stay here." He warmed to the idea as soon as he began to express it. "This is your home, rather than mine. It's your father's house. You've lived in it for years. I couldn't stay here without you--while you're used to it without me. I'll go. I'll go--and I'll not come back till you tell me. There. Will that do?"

The advantages of the arrangement were evident. She answered slowly.

"It--it might. But what about your patients?"

"Oh, Hill would look after them. He said he would if I wanted to attend the medical congress at Minneapolis. I told him I didn't, but--but"--he tapped the rail to emphasize the timeliness of the idea--"but, by George! I'll do it. You'd have three weeks at least--and as many more as you ask for."

She gave the suggestion a minute's thought. "Very well, Thor. Since the congress is going on--and your time wouldn't be altogether thrown away--You see, all I want is a little quiet--a little solitude, perhaps--just to realize where I am--and to see how--to begin again--if we ever can."

She closed one side of the window, softly and slowly. Her hands were on the other _battant_ when he uttered a little throaty cry. "Aren't you going to say good night?"

Standing on the low step of the window, she was sufficiently above him to be able to fold his head in her arms, to pillow it on her breast, while she imprinted a long kiss on the thick, dark ma.s.s of his hair.

Having released him, she withdrew, closing the window gently and pulling down the blinds.

Outside in the darkness Thor turned once more to where the Virgin, rec.u.mbent, n.o.ble, outlined and crowned with stars, Spica the wheat-ear in the hand hanging by her side, rose slowly toward mid-heaven.

Irrelevantly there came back to his memory something said months before by his uncle Sim, but which he had not recalled since the night he heard it. "You may make an awful fool of yourself, Thor, but you'll be on the side of the angels--and the angels will be on yours."

"Humph!" he snorted to himself. "That's all very fine. But--where are the angels?" And again he sought the stars.

CHAPTER XXVIII

It was Jim Breen who told Lois that Jasper Fay's tenancy of the land north of the pond was definitely ended. "Want a nice fern-tree, Mrs.

Masterman?" he had asked, briskly. "Two or three beauties for sale at Mr. Fay's place. Look dandy in the corner of a big room. Beat palms and rubber-plants like a rose'll beat a bur. Get a nice one cheap at Mr.

Fay's."

Lois wondered. "Is Mr. Fay selling off?"

"Well, not exactly. Father's selling what he don't want to cart over to our place. Didn't you know? Father's bought out Mr. Fay's stock. Mr.

Fay's got to beat it by July ninth."

As Lois looked into the honest face she made the reflection with a little jealous pang that Rosie Fay was just the type that men like Jim Breen fell in love with. There was something in men like Jim Breen, in men like Thor Masterman--the big, generous, tender men--that impelled them toward piteous little creatures like Rosie Fay, driven probably by the protective yearning in themselves. It placed the tall women, the strong women, the women whose first impulse was to give to others rather than to get anything for themselves, at a disadvantage. In response to the information just received, she said, anxiously, "Why, Jim, tell me about it."

He drew from the wagon a wooden "flat" filled with zinnia plantlings, like so many little green rosettes. "Hadley B. Hobson owns that property now, Mrs. Masterman," he said, cheerily, depositing the "flat" on the ground. "Going to build. Didn't you know? Have a dandy place there. Had architects and landscape-gardeners prowling 'round for the last two weeks, and old man Fay won't allow one of them on the grounds. You'd die laughing to see him chasing them off with a spade or a rake or whatever he has in his hand. His property till July ninth, he says, and he wouldn't let so much as a crow fly over it if it belonged to Hadley B.

Hobson. You'd die laughing."

"I don't see how you can laugh when he's in such trouble, poor man."

"Oh, well," Jim drawled, optimistically, "he won't do so bad. He can always have a job with father. Father's mingled with him ever since the two of them were young. If Mr. Fay hadn't been so moonstruck he'd have had just the same chance as father had."

Lois chose a moment which seemed to be discreet in order to say: "I know Rosie quite well. I've seen a good deal of her during the past few months."

"Rosie's all right, Mrs. Masterman," Jim answered, suddenly and a trifle aggressively. "I don't care what any one says--she's all right."

"I know she's all right, Jim. She's one of the most remarkable characters I've ever met. I often wish she'd let me help her more."

"Well, you hold on to her, Mrs. Masterman," he advised, with a curious, pleading quality in his voice. "You'll find she'll be worth it. And if ever a girl was up against it--she is."

"I will hold on to her, Jim."

"It's all rot what people are saying that she'd gone melancholy because she took that fool jump into the pond. I know how she did it. She'd got to the point where she couldn't help it, where she just couldn't stand any more--with the business all gone to pieces and Matt coming out of jail, and everything else. Who wouldn't have done it? I'd have done it myself, if I'd been a girl. She'd got worked up, Mrs. Masterman, and when girls get worked up, why, they'll do anything. I believe the shock's done her good. Sort of cleared her mind like."

Lois tried to be tactful. "Then you see her?"

"We-ll--on and off." He grew appealing and confidential. "I don't mind telling you, Mrs. Masterman," he began, as if acknowledging an indiscretion, "I went with Rosie once. Went with her for over a year."

"Did you, Jim?"

He leaned nonchalantly against Maud's barrel-shaped body, his face taking on an expression of boyish regret. "And I'd have gone on going with her if--if Rosie hadn't--hadn't kind of dropped me."

"Oh, but, Jim, why should she?"

"We-ll, I can understand it. Rosie's high-toned, you know, Mrs.

Masterman, and she's got a magnificent education. I guess you wouldn't come across them more refined, not in the most tip-top families. Pretty!

My Lord! pretty isn't the word for it. And I think she grows prettier.

And work! Why, Mrs. Masterman, if that girl was at the head of a plant like ours there wouldn't be anything for father and me to do but sit in a chair and rock."

"I'm glad she's willing to see you," Lois ventured.

He sprang to his seat behind Maud. "Well, I guess she needs all the friends she's got."

Lois ventured still further. "I'm sure she needs friends like you, Jim."

There was a flare in his eye as he fumbled for the reins. "Well, she's only got to stoop and pick me up. Git along, Maud. Gee!" In obedience to his pull Maud arched her heavy neck and executed a sidewise movement uncertainly. "She knows I'm there," he continued, as the wagon creaked round. "Been there ever since she dropped me. Gee! Maud, gee! What you thinking of? I've never gone with any one else, Mrs. Masterman--not really _gone_ with them. Rosie's been the only one so far. Well, good-by. And you _will_ hold on to her, Mrs. Masterman, now, won't you?"

"Indeed I will, Jim--and--and you must do the same."

He threw her a rueful look over his shoulder, as Maud paced toward the gate. "Oh, I'm on the job every time."

The visit gave her a number of themes for thought, of which the most insistent was the power some women had of drawing out the love of men.

For the rest of the day her gardening became no more than a mechanical directing of the setting out of seedlings, while she meditated on the problem of attractiveness.

How was it that women of small endowments could captivate men at sight, and that others of inexhaustible potentialities--she was not afraid to rank herself among them--went unrecognized and undesired? If Rosie Fay had been content with the honors of a local belle, she could have had her choice among half the young men in the village. What was her gift?

What was the gift of that great sisterhood, comprising perhaps a third of the women in the world, to whom the majority of men turned instinctively, ignoring, or partially ignoring, the rest? Was it mere sheep-stupidity in men themselves that sent one where the others went, without capacity for individual discernment?--or was there a secret call that women like Rosie Fay could give which brought them too much of that for which other women were left famishing?

She put the question that evening to Dr. Sim Masterman, who had dropped in to see her, as he not infrequently did after his supper, now that Thor was away. Indeed, his visits were so regular as to make her afraid that with his curious social or spiritual second sight he suspected more in Thor's absence than zeal for the science of medicine.

"Why do men fall in love with inferior women?--become infatuated with them?"

He answered while sprawling before the library fire, his long legs apart, his fingers interlocked over his old tan waistcoat. "No use to discuss love with a woman. She can't get hold of it by the right end."

"Oh, but I thought that was just what she could do--one of the few capabilities universally conceded her."

"All wrong, my dear. A man occasionally understands love, but a woman never--or so rarely that it hardly counts. Gets it backward--wrong end first--nine women out of ten."

She looked up from her sewing. "I do wish you'd tell me what you mean by that."