Flippin; "you will tell me if I am in the way----"

Mrs. Flippin adored Madge. "It is like having a Princess in the house," she said, "only she don't act like a Princess."

The Major came over every afternoon. Kemp drove him, as a rule, in the King's Crest surrey. If the little man missed Dalton's cars, he said no word. He made the Major very comfortable. He lived a life of ease if not of elegance, and he loved the wooded hills, the golden air, the fine old houses, the serene autumn glory of this southern world.

On the afternoon when the Major talked to Madge of the world at peace, they were together under the apple tree which Madge had first seen from the window of the east room. There were other apple trees in the old orchard, but it was this tree that Madge liked because of its golden globes. "The red ones are wonderful," she said, "but red isn't my color. With my gold skin, they make me look like a gypsy. If I am to be a golden girl, I must stay away from red----"

"Is that what you are--a golden girl?"

"That was always George Dalton's name for me."

"I am sorry."

"Why?"

"Because I should like it to be mine for you. I should like to link my golden West with the thought of you."

"And you won't now, because it was somebody else's name for me?"

Kemp, before he went away, had made her comfortable with cushions in a chair-like crotch of the old tree. The Major was at her feet. He meditated a moment. "I shall make it my name for you. What do I care what other men have called you."

"Do you know what you called me--once?" she was smiling down at him.

"No."

"A little lame duck. It was when I first tried to use my foot. And you laughed, and said that it--linked us--together. And now you are trying to link me with your West----"

"You know why, of course."

"Yes, I do."

He drew a long breath. "Most women would, have said, 'No, I don't know.' But you told the truth. I want to link you with my life in every way I can because I love you. And you know that I care--very much--that I want you for my wife--my golden girl in my golden West----?"

"You have never told me before that--you cared."

"There was no need to tell it. You knew."

"Yes. I was afraid it was true----"

He was startled. "Afraid? Why?"

"Oh, I oughtn't to let you care," she said. "You don't know what a slacker I've been. And I don't want you to find out----"

"The only thing that I want to find out is whether you care for me."

She flushed a little under his steady gaze, then quite unexpectedly she reached her hand down to him. He took it in his firm clasp. "I do care--an awful lot," she said, "but I've tried not to. And I shouldn't let you care for me."

"Why--shouldn't?"

"I'm not--half good enough. My life has always been lived at loose ends. Nothing bad, but a thousand things that you wouldn't--like to hear--I'm not a golden girl--I'm a gilded one----"

"Why should you tell me things like that? I don't believe it."

"Please believe it," she said earnestly, "don't whitewash things. Just let me begin again--loving you----"

Her voice broke. He drew himself up, and took her in his arms. "My dear girl," he said, "my dear girl----"

"I never met a man like you, I never believed there were--such men----"

He felt her tears against his hand.

"Listen," he said quietly; "let me tell you something of my life." He told her the things he had told Randy. Of the little wife he had not loved. "Perhaps if it had not been for her, I should not have had the courage to offer to you my--maimed--self. When I married her I was strong and young and had wealth to give her. Yet I did not give her love. And love is more than all the rest. I have that to give you--you know it."

"Yes."

"I have some money. I don't think it is going to count much with either of us. What will count is the way we plan our future. I have a big old ranch, and we'll live in it--with the dairy and the wide kitchen that you've talked about--and you won't have to wait for another world, dearest, to get your heart's desire----"

"I have my heart's desire," she whispered; "you are--my world."

II

Madge wrote to George Dalton that she was going to marry Major Prime.

"There is no reason why we should put it off; Georgie. The clergyman who prayed for Flora will perform the ceremony, and the wedding will be at the Flippins' farm.

"It seems, of course, too good to be true. Not many women have such luck. Not my kind of women anyway. We meet men as a rule who want us to be gilded girls, and not golden ones. But Mark wants me to be gold all through. And I shall try to be---- We are to live on his ranch, a place that pa.s.ses in California for a farm--a sort of glorified country place. Mrs. Flippin is teaching me to make b.u.t.ter, so that I can superintend my own dairy, and I have learned a great deal about chickens and eggs.

"I am going to be a housewife in what I call a reincarnated sense--loving my house and the things which belong to it, and living as a part of it, not above it, and looking down upon it. Perhaps all American women will come to that some day and I shall simply be blazing the way for them. I shall probably grow rosy and round, and if you ever ride up to my door-step, yon will find me a buxom and blooming matron instead of a golden girl. And you won't like it in the least.

But my husband will like it, because he thinks a bit as I do about it, and he doesn't care for the woman who lives for her looks.

"I shall come and see Flora before I go West. But I am going to be married first. We both have a feeling that it must be now--that something might happen if we put it off, and nothing must happen. I love him too much. Of course you won't believe that. I can hardly believe it myself. But I have someone to climb the heights with me, Georgie, and we shall ascend to the peak--together."

For a wedding present George sent Madge the pendant he had bought for Becky. To connect it up with Madge's favorite color scheme, he had an amethyst put in place of the sapphire. He was glad to give it away.

Every time he had come upon it, it had reminded him of things that he wished to forget.

Yet he could not forget. Even as Becky had thought of him, he had thought of her; of her radiant youth on the morning that Randy had arrived; at the Horse Show in her shabby shoes and sailor hat; in the Bird Room in pale blue under the swinging lamp; in the music room between tall candles; in the garden, with a star shining into the still pool; that last night, on the balcony, leaning over, with a yellow lantern like a halo behind her.

There were other things that he thought of--of Randy, in khaki on the station platform; Randy, lean and tall among the boarders; Randy, left behind with Kemp in the rain; Randy, debonair and insolent, announcing his engagement on the terrace at Hamilton Hill; Randy, a shadow against a silver sky, answering Becky's call; Randy, in the dark by the fountain, with muscles like iron, forcing him inevitably back, lifting him above the basin, letting him drop----; Randy, the Conqueror, marching away with Becky's fan as his trophy----!

New York was, of course, at this season of the year, a pageant of sparkling crowds, and of brilliant window displays, of new productions at the theaters. People were coming back to town. Even the fashionable folk were running down to taste the elixir of the early days in the metropolis.

But George found everything flat and stale. He did the things he had always done, hunted up the friends he had always known. He spent weekends at various country places, and came always back to town with an undiminished sense of his need of Becky, and his need of revenge on Randy.

He had heard before he left Virginia that Becky was at Nantucket. He had found some consolation in the fact that she was not at Huntersfield. To have thought of her with Randy in the old garden, on Pavilion Hill, in the Bird Room, would have been unbearable.

He had a feeling that, in a sense, Madge's marriage was a desertion.

He did not in the least want to marry her, but there were moments when he needed her friendship very much. He needed it now. And she was going to marry Major Prime, and go out to some G.o.d-forsaken place, and get fat and lose her beauty. He wished that she would not talk about such things--it made him feel old, and worried about his waist-line.