"I have never known anyone with such a beautiful nature as yours, Miss Dosia! I just worship you! I only want to live to make you happy."

He did not himself care for motoring-being, truth to tell, afraid of it-but she was to choose a car next week. She had told him about her father and her mother and the children. She was to have the latter come up to stay with her after she was married-do anything for them that she would. In imagination now she was taking them through all the shops in town, buying them toy horses and soldiers and b.a.l.l.s, and dressing them in darling little light-blue sailor-suits. She could hardly wait for the time to come! She thought with a little awe that she hadn't known that Mr. Sutton was as well off as he seemed to be. And the way he had spoken of Lawson-Ah, Lawson! That name tugged at her heart; this suddenly became one of those anguished moments when she yearned over him as over a beloved lost child, to be wept for, succored only through her efforts.

She must never forget! "Lawson, I believe in you." She stopped in the shaded, quiet street with its garden-surrounded houses, and said the words aloud with a solemn sense of immortal infinite power, before coming back to the eager surface planning of her own life, with an intermediate throb of a new and deeper loneliness. The Dosia who had so upliftingly faced truth had only strength enough left now to evade it.

Perhaps some of that exquisite inner perception of her nature had been jarred confusingly out of touch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Flowers and children, children and flowers_]

Mrs. Wayne was in, although, the maid announced, she had but just returned from town. A moment later Dosia heard herself called from above:

"Dosia Linden! Won't you come up-stairs? You don't mind, do you?"

"No, indeed," answered Dosia, obeying the summons with alacrity, and pleased that she should be considered so intimate. This was more than she had expected-an informal reception and talk! With Dosia's own responsive warmth, she felt that she really must always have wanted to see more of Alice, who, in her lacy pink-and-white negligee, might be pardoned for wishing to show off this ornament of her trousseau.

"I hope you won't mind the appearance of this room," she announced, after a hospitable violet-perfumed embrace. "I went to town so early this morning that I didn't have time to really set things to rights, and I don't like the new maid to touch them."

"You have so many pretty things," said Dosia admiringly.

"Yes, haven't I? Take that seat by the window, it's cooler. Please don't look at that dressing-table; Harry leaves his neckties everywhere, though he has his own chiffonier in the other room-he's such a _bad_ boy! He seems to think I have nothing to do but put away his things for him."

Mrs. Wayne paused with a bridal air of important matronly responsibility. She was a tall, thin, black-haired, dashing girl, not at all pretty, who was always spoken of compensatingly as having a great deal of "style," but she seemed to have gained some new and gentle charm of attraction because she was so happy.

"Have this fan, won't you?" She went on talking: "Harry and I saw you and George Sutton out walking yesterday. We were in the motor, and had stopped up on the Drive to speak to Mr. Girard. He _is_ just the loveliest thing! What a pity he won't go where there are girls! Harry is quite jealous, though I tell him he needn't be." Mrs. Wayne paused with a lovely flush before going on. "You didn't see us, though we stopped quite near you. My dear, it's _very_ evident that-" She paused once more, this time with arch significance. "Oh, you needn't be afraid, I never know anything until I'm told. But George is such a good fellow!

I'm sure I ought to know-he was perfectly devoted to me. He's not the kind girls are apt to take a fancy to, perhaps,-girls are so foolish and romantic,-but he'd be awfully nice to his wife. Harry says he's a lot richer than anybody knows. And people are so much happier married-the right people, of course."

"Did you have a pleasant time while you were away?" asked Dosia, as she lay back in her low, wide, prettily chintz-covered arm-chair. If she had had some half-defined impulse to confide in Alice Wayne, it was gone, melted away in this too fervid sunshine of approval. She had, instead, one of her accessions of dainty shyness; the ring on her finger, underneath her glove, seemed to burn into her flesh. Her eyes roved warily around the room as Mrs. Wayne talked about her wedding-trip and her husband, folding up her Harry's neckties as she chattered, her fingers lingering over them with little secret pats. She brought out some of her pretty dresses afterwards for Dosia's inspection. From the open door of a closet beyond, a pair of shoes was distinctly visible-Harry's shoes, which the wife laughingly put back into place as she went and closed the door. It was impossible not to see that even those clumsy, monstrously thick-soled things were touched with sentiment for her because the feet of her dearest had worn them.

In Dosia's world so far it was a matter of course that some people were married-their household life went unnoticed, the fact had no relation to her own intangible dreams or hopes; it was a condition inherent to these elders, and not of any particular interest to her. But Alice Wayne had been a girl like herself until now. This matter-of-fact community of living forced itself upon her notice, as if for the first time, as an absolutely new thing. The blood surged up suddenly through the ice of her indifference; the room choked her. George b.u.t.ton's neckties, not to speak of his shoes--!

"I'll have to be going," she interrupted precipitately, rising as she spoke.

"Why,"-Alice Wayne stopped in the middle of a sentence, looking at her in surprise,-"what's the matter? Aren't you well?"

"Yes, yes, but I have an appointment," affirmed Dosia desperately. "I've been enjoying it all so much, but I'd forgotten I must go-at once!

Good-by."

She almost ran on the way home. There was no appointment, but it was imperative that she should be alone, away from all suggestion of the newly married. She hoped that there would be no visitors, but as she neared the house she saw that there was some one on the piazza-George Sutton, frock-coated and high-hatted, with a rose above his white waistcoat and a beaming face that rivaled the rose in color as he came to meet her.

"Why, I thought you were not coming until this evening," said Dosia demandingly,-"not until you could see Justin."

"Did you think I could stay away as long as that?" asked George. His manner the night before had been almost reverential in the depth of his honest emotion; the kiss he had imprinted on her forehead had seemed of an impersonal nature, and she a princess who regally allowed it. She was conscious now of a change.

"Where is Lois?" she asked, as they went up the steps together.

"The maid said she had stepped out for a moment."

"Then we'll sit here on the piazza and wait for her," said Dosia, without looking at her lover. Taking the hat-pins out of her hat, she deposited it on a chair with a quick decision of movement, and then seated herself by a wicker table, while Mr. Sutton, looking disappointed, was left perforce to the rocker on the other side.

The piazza was rather a long one, and, except for a rambling vine, open toward the street; but around the corner of the house j.a.panese screens walled it off from pa.s.sers-by into a cozy arbored nook, sweet with big bowls of roses.

"Come around to the other end of the porch," said George appealingly.

"No," said Dosia, with her obstinate expression; "I like it here."

She stripped the long gloves from her arms, and spread out her hands, palms upward, in her lap. The diamond, which had been turned inward, caught the sunshine gloriously. His gaze fell upon it, and he smiled.

Dosia saw the smile and reddened.

"I wish you wouldn't sit there looking at me," she said in a tone which she tried to make neutral.

"Come down to the other end of the piazza-just for a moment."

"No!" said Dosia again. She gave a sudden movement and changed her tone sharply: "Oh, there's a spider on the table there, crawling toward me!

Please take it away." Her voice rose uncontrollably. "I hate spiders- oh, I _hate_ spiders! I'm afraid of them. Make it go away! please!

There-now you've got it; throw it off the piazza, quick! Don't bring it near me!"

"The little spider won't hurt you," said George enjoyingly.

Dosia, flushing and paling alternately, carried entirely out of her deterring placidity, her blue eyes dilatingly raised to his, her red lips quivering, was distractingly lovely; fear gave to her quick, uncalculated movements the grace of a wild thing. George, in spite of his solid good qualities, possessed the mistaken playfulness of the innately vulgar. He advanced, the spider now held between his thumb and forefinger, a little nearer to her-a little nearer yet. There is a type of bucolic mind to which the causeless, palpitating fear of a woman is an exquisitely funny joke.

"Don't," said Dosia again, in a strangled voice, ready to fly from the chair. The spider touched her sleeve, with George's fatuously smiling face behind it. The next instant she had fled wildly down to the screened corner of the veranda, with George after her, only to be stopped by the screens at the end. His following arms closed tightly around her as he kissed her in happy triumph.

After one wild, instinctive effort at struggle, Dosia stood perfectly still, with that peculiarly defensive self-possession that came into play at such times. She seemed to yield entirely now to the rightful caresses of an accepted lover as she said in a perfectly even and casual tone of voice:

"Let me go for a moment, George! I must get my handkerchief from up-stairs. I'll be right back again."

"Don't be gone long," said George fondly, releasing her half-unconsciously at the accent of custom.

"No," said Dosia, very pale, and smiling back at him coquettishly as she went off with unhurried step-to dart up two pairs of stairs like a flying, hunted thing, and into her room, to lock the door fast and bolt it as if from the thoughts that pursued her.

Lois, coming up the stairs half an hour later, rattled the door-k.n.o.b ineffectually before she knocked.

"Dosia, what's the matter? To whom are you talking? Let me in! Katy said, when she came up, you would not answer-she said Mr. Sutton had been walking up and down the piazza for a long time. Dosia, let me in; let me in this minute!"

The key clicked in the lock, the bolt slipped back, and the door flew open. Dosia, in her blue muslin frock, her hair in wild disorder, was standing in the center of the room, fiercely rubbing her already scarlet cheeks with a rough towel. Every trace of a.s.sumed listlessness had vanished; she was frantically alive, with blazing, defiant eyes, and talking half-disconnectedly.

"Never let him come here again-never, never!" she appealed to Lois.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"Never let him come here again-never, never!_"]

"Whom do you mean?"

"George Sutton!"

A contraction pa.s.sed over her face; she began rubbing again with renewed fury.

"Don't do that, Dosia! You'll take the skin off. Stop it!"

Lois, alarmed, put her arm around the girl, trying to push the towel away from her. "Dosia, sit down by me here on the bed-how you're trembling! What on earth is the matter? Dosia, you must not, you'll take the skin off your face."