Maria Angelina had no difficulty at all in recollecting where she was when she came to herself next morning, for her dreams had been growing sharper and sharper with reality. In those dreams she was forever climbing down mountain sides, tripping, stumbling, down, down, forever down, until at last there surged through her the warmth of that cabin fire and the memory of Barry Elder's care.

She opened her eyes. The warmth of the dream fire was a blaze of sunlight that fell across it. The fire itself a charred mass of embers upon a mound of gray ashes. Upon the hearth stood the disreputable remnants of her sodden shoes.

For a few moments she lay still, her consciousness invaded with its rush of memories. She felt very direfully stiff when she thought about it, but after the first moment she did not think about it.

She sat up and looked eagerly about.

There were no shadows now; the sunlight was streaming in through the cabin's three windows and through the door that stood open into a world of forest green. She heard birds singing and the sound of running water. Barry Elder was nowhere to be seen.

The cabin was one room, an amazing room, its unconcealed simplicities blazoning themselves cheerfully in the light. There were rustic tables and comfortable chairs; there was a couch untouched, apparently, save that it had been denuded of the cushions that lay now about her. There was a small black stove and pans on it and dishes on a stand. There was a chest of drawers and along the walls were low open shelves of books, the shelves topped with a miscellany of pipes and pictures and playing cards.Between two windows stood a large table buried in books and papers with a typewriter poking its head above the confusion.

So he really was writing a play—another play. She hoped, remembering Cousin Jim's remark, that he would not put too much Harvard in.

She got to her feet—with wincing reluctance for every muscle in her small person made its lameness felt, and she limped when she began to walk. The rejected pile of clothing had disappeared from her side, but the fringed moccasins were left, and very humbly she drew them on. Her stockings were not those in which a Santonini desires to be discovered!

Uncertainly she moved towards the door, her stiffly dried white skirt rattling at each move. It was a battleground of a skirt where black mud and green grass stains struggled for preËminence, and her poor middy blouse, she thought, was in little better plight.

She had a sudden, half hysterical thought of Lucia's face, if Lucia could see her now, and a queer little gulp of laughter caught in the lump in her throat!

"Morning, Signorina! A merry morning to you."

Up the grassy bank before the cabin Barry Elder came swinging towards her, a lithe figure in brown knickers and white shirt rolling loosely open at the throat. His face was flushed and his brown, close-cropped curls were wet as if he had been ducking them into the cold river water.

He waved one hand gayly; the other was carrying a pail of water.

"You look so clean!" gave back Maria Angelina impetuously, her laughter rising to meet his, but her sensitive blood coloring her face before his gaze.

"There's the entire river to wash in. I thought you'd like it better out of doors so I've built you a dressing room. ... Meanwhile the commissary will be working. Don't be too long, for breakfast will be ready," he told her, passing by her into the house, with a gesture of direction as if it were the most matter of fact thing in the world for young men to cook breakfast and for young ladies to wash in rivers.

So Maria Angelina followed his directions and went down into the grove of young birches that he called her dressing-room.

Here greenness was all about her, and through the delicate, interlacing boughs before her even the river was shut out, except one eddying stream of it that swerved in beneath her feet. There was lovely freshness in the morning air, a lovely brightness in the sky above her. It was a dressing-room for a nymph of the woods, for a dryad, for Diana herself.

Gratefully she stooped to the cold water at her feet. There on the bank, upon a spread towel, she discovered soap and fresh towels, a comb and a pair of military brushes, still wet from recent washing. He was very sweet and thoughtful, that Barry Elder.

Valiantly she attacked that tangled hair of hers, reducing it to the old submissive braids which she coroneted about her head, fastening them with twigs as best she could, and then she washed deliciously in that cold, running stream. It must be wonderful, she felt, to be a man and to live like this. One could forget the world in such a place. ...

Sandy dashed upon her, scattering the gathering darkness of her thoughts, and she yielded to the young impulse to splash and romp with him before returning with him to the cabin.

She felt shy about reËntering that house ... and Barry Elder's presence.

A rich aroma of coffee greeted her upon the threshold. So did her host's voice in mock severity.

"I sent Sandy to bring you in—and I was just coming after the two of you. ... Will you sit here? I did have a dressy thought of setting up a table out of doors but this is handier—nearer the stove, you know. You've no idea of the convenience of it."

"But you are getting me so many meals," protested Maria Angelina, confronted by a small table which he had spread for two before the fireplace. Within the hearth he had kindled a small and cheerful blaze.

"I'll agree to keep it up as long as you eat them."

Swiftly Barry turned the browning ham from the iron spider into a small platter and deposited it upon the table with a flourish. Then he placed the granite coffeepot at her right hand.

"I made it with an egg," he said proudly. "Will you pour, Signorina, while I cut this? That's genuine canned cream—none of your execrable Continental hot milk for me! And I like my cream first with three lumps of sugar, please."

He smiled blithely upon her as with a deep and delicious constraint her small hands moved, housewifely, among his cups.

"These aren't French rolls," he murmured, "but I promise you that they are cold enough for a true Italian breakfast, and there is honey and there is jam—and here, Signorina, is ham, milk-fed, smoke-cured, and browned to make the best chef of Sherry's pale with envy and despair. ... I thank you," and he accepted the cup of coffee from her hand with another direct smile that deepened the confusion of the girl's spirit.

A dream had succeeded the nightmare, a fairy tale of a dream. It was unreal ... it was a bubble that would break ... but it was a spell, an enchantment.

She forgot that she was tired and bruised; she forgot her stained clothes; she forgot her outrageous past and her terrifying future.

Oblivious and bewitched, she smiled across the table into Barry Elder's eyes and poured his coffee and ate his bread and jam. The amazing youth in her forgot for those moments all that it had suffered and all that it must meet. She was floating, floating in the web of this beautiful unreality.

And Barry Elder himself appeared a very different person from that bitter young man who had stared desperately into the fire and talked about cake and disillusionment. In spite of his lack of sleep there was nothing in the least haggard about his young face; he looked remarkably alert and interested in life, and his eyes were very gentle and his smile very sweet.

Perhaps there was something of a dream to him in the presence of a fairylike young creature who had blown in with the storm and slept upon his sheltering hearth. Perhaps there was an enchantment to him in the exquisite young face across the table, the shy, soft eyes, the delicate pale contours.

Into their absorption came a shattering knock upon the door. Instantly the nightmare was upon Maria Angelina. She was tense, her eyes wide, her lips parted. And as the knock was repeated, one hand, wide-fingered in fright, was raised as if to ward off some palpable blow.

"Oh, let me hide," she breathed across the table into Barry Elder's ears.Fortunately the latch was on the door.

"Who's there?" said Barry Elder raising his voice to cover her reiterated whisper. In negation he gestured her to silence.

"Hello, hello there, I say!"

It was the voice of Johnny Byrd and Maria Angelina half rose from her chair and clutched Barry Elder's arm as he moved towards the summons.

"Do not let him in," she gasped. "That is the man—last night——"

The dog's barking was drowning her words. Johnny called again.

"Anybody in? Here you wake up—anybody here?"

Barry Elder had stood still at her words. His expression changed. He turned and pointed to a blanket from the floor flung over a chair.

She slipped behind it.

Calling to his dog to behave and keep still, Barry stepped over to the door and opened it.

"Oh, Barry Elder! Gee, I thought this was your place but I didn't know you were here," Johnny Byrd declared in relief. "I saw the smoke and knew there was somebody about. ... Gee, have you got any food?"

Slowly Barry surveyed him.

Johnny Byrd was not punctiliously turned out; he was streaked and muddied; his blue eyes were rimmed with red as if his night's rest had not been wholly soothing; he had no cap and his hair had clearly been combed back by fingers into its restless roach.

Barry's eyes appreciated each detail. "Hello, Johnny," he remarked without affability. "How did you happen to toddle over for breakfast?"

Johnny was not critical of tones. "Oh, never mind the damned details," he said bitterly. "Gawd, I could eat a raw cow. ... Say, you haven't seen any one pass here lately, have you? I mean has any one been by at all?"

"I haven't seen any one pass here at all," said Barry Elder.

"Sure? But have you been looking out? Say, what other way is there—Oh, my Lord, is that coffee? Or do I only dream I smell it? I haven't had a bite since the middle of yesterday. Let me get to it."

But Barry Elder did not spring to the duties of his hostship. He did not even move aside to permit Johnny Byrd to spring to his own assistance—which Johnny showed every symptom of doing. He continued to stand obstructingly in the middle of his log doorstep, one hand on the knob of the half closed door behind him, his eyes fixed very curiously on Johnny's flushed disorder.

"What kind of an 'any one' are you looking for?" said Barry slowly.

"Oh—a—well, I guess you've got to help me out on this. You know the country. There's no use stalling. It's a girl—a foreign-looking girl."

"And what are you doing at six in the morning looking for a foreign-looking girl?"

"It's the darndest luck," Johnny broke out explosively. "We—we got lost last night going to a picnic on Old Baldy—and then we got separated——"

"How?"

"How?" Johnny stared back at Barry Elder and found something oddly fixed and challenging in that young man's eyes.

"Why how—how does any one get separated?" he threw back querulously.

"I can't imagine—especially when one is responsible for a girl."

"Gosh, Barry, you're talking like a grandmother. Aren't you going to give me anything to eat? What's the matter with you, anyway? You act devilish queer——"

Again he confronted the coldness of Barry's gaze and his own face changed suddenly, with swift surmise.

"Say, has she been here?" he broke out. "You've seen her, haven't you? I was sure I saw tracks. ... Has she—has she told you anything?"

Barry leaned a little nearer the door-frame, drawing the door closer behind him. Through the crack Sandy's pointed noise and exploring eyes were fixed inquiringly upon the visitor and he whined eagerly as, scenting disapprobation in the air, he yearned to meet this trouble halfway.

"I think you had better," Barry told him.

"Better? Better what?"

"Better tell me—everything."

"Oh, all right, all right! I've nothing to conceal. I didn't go off my chump and behave like a darn lunatic in grand opera!"

Then very quickly Johnny veered from anger into confidence.

"Here's the whole story—and there's nothing to it. She's crazy—crazy with her foreign notions, I tell you. At first I thought she was trying to put something over on me, but I guess she's just genuinely crazy. It's the way she was brought up. They go mad over there and bite if you're left alone in a room with a girl."

Definitely Barry waited.

"We were up there on the mountain," said Johnny more lucidly. "We'd lost the others—no fault of ours, Barry—you needn't look like a movie censor—and we found we'd got to make a night of it. We were just worn out and going in circles. And she—I give you my word I didn't do one gosh-darned thing, but that girl just naturally took on and raved about wanting me to marry her and blew me up when I said I hadn't asked her and then—then—when I tried to get shelter in a little old shack we'd stumbled on she just up and bolted. She——"

His words died away. His eyes dropped before the blaze that met them.

Very slowly Barry formulated his feelings.

"You—infernal——"

"Hold on there, I'm not any such thing."

Through the bluster of Johnny's rally a really injured innocence made its outcry. "She had no more reason to bolt than a—a grandmother." Grandmothers appeared to be Johnny's sole figure of comparison. "You're getting this dead wrong, Barry. ... Look here, what do you take me for?"

"That's a large question," said Barry slowly. But his tone was milder though far from reassuring. "But do you tell me that she asked you to marry her?"

"I do. She did. Just like that—out of a clear sky."

"But what was the reason——"

"There wasn't a reason, I give you my word, Barry."

"You hadn't been saying anything to her—to suggest it?"

Johnny Byrd's face changed unhappily. His sunburned warmth deepened to a brick red.

"Why, no—not about marrying. Oh, hang it all, Barry, don't act as if you never kissed a pretty girl! Oh, she pretended she thought that was proposing to her—just as if a few friendly words and a half kiss meant anything like that. ... I'll own I was gone on her," Johnny found himself suddenly announcing, "but when she was taking marriage for granted right off it sounded too much like a hold-up and I flared all over."

"A hold-up?"

"Oh, thumb screws, you know—the same old quick-step to the altar. I hadn't done a thing, I tell you, but it looked as if she thought that our being there was something she could stage a scene on and so I thought—you don't know what things have been tried on me before," he broke off to protest at Barry's expression.

Mutteringly he offered, "You other fellows may think you know a little bit about side-stepping girls but when it comes to any kind of a bank roll—they're like starving Armenians at sight of food. I'd had 'em try all sorts of things. ... But I own, now, she was just going according to her foreign ways. She must have been half scared to death. And she—she is pretty crazy about me——"

"I am not pretty crazy about you, Johnny Byrd!"

The door behind Barry was wrenched from his holding and flung violently open and Maria Angelina appeared upon the threshold, a defiant little image of war. Deadly pale, except for that scarlet stain across her cheek, her eyes blazing, there was something so mortally honest in the indignant anger that possessed her that Johnny Byrd unconsciously fell back a step, and Barry Elder stood aside, his own gaze lit with concern and wonder.

"I am despising you for a coward and a flirter," said Maria Angelina in a low but exceedingly penetrative voice, and so intense was her command of the situation that neither man found humor, then, in the misused word.

"You make love to girls when you mean nothing by it—you get them lost in the woods and then refuse the marriage that any gentleman, even an indifferent gentleman, would offer! And then you behave like a savage. You bully and try to force your way into the actual room of shelter with me!"

"You see!" Johnny waved his hand helplessly at her and looked appealingly at Barry for a gleam of masculine right-mindedness. "She—she wanted me to stay out in the rain, Barry."

"But as it was, she stayed out in the rain and you slept in the shelter."

"She ran, I'm telling you. I couldn't chase her forever, could I? I tried to track her as soon as it got a little light and I could see where she'd been sliding and slipping along, and honestly, I've been nearly bats with worry till I got a trace of her again back in the woods."

Barry Elder turned towards the girl.

"And that's the whole story, Signorina? That's all there is to it?"

"All?" Maria Angelina echoed bewilderedly. She thought there was enough and to spare. It seemed to her that she had related the destruction of her lifetime.

She stopped. She would not cry again before Johnny Byrd. She called on all her pride to keep her firm before him.

A queer change came over Barry Elder's expression. The light that seemed to be shining in the back of his eyes was bright again. He looked at Maria Angelina in a thoughtful silence, then he turned to Johnny Byrd.

"I don't think you know how serious a business this is in Italy," he told him. "You know, there where a girl cannot even see a man alone——"

"Well, we don't need to cable it to Italy, do we?" Johnny demanded in disgust. "It isn't going to spill any beans here. But it would look fine, wouldn't it, if I came back to the Lodge yelling to marry her?"

"Right you are. That is it, Signorina," Barry Elder agreed very promptly. "That's the way it would look in America. Being lost is an unpleasant accident. Nothing more—between young people of good family. Not that young people of good families make a practice of being lost," he supplemented, his eyes dancing in spite of himself at Maria Angelina's deepening amaze, "but when anything like that happens—as it has before this in the Adirondacks—people don't start an ugly scandal. They may talk a little of course, but it won't do you any real harm. ... And it wouldn't be quite nice for Johnny to go rushing about offering you marriage. The occasion doesn't demand it in the least."

Helplessly she regarded him. ... She felt utterly astray—astray and blundering. ...

"Would Cousin Jane think so?" she appealed.

"She would," averred Barry stoutly, over the twinge of an inner qualm. "And so would your own mother, if she were here."

But there Maria Angelina was on solid ground.

"You know little about that," she told him with spirit. "If I were lost in Italy——"

But it was so impossible, being lost in Italy, that Maria Angelina could only break off and guard a bewildered silence.

"Then I expect your mother had better not know," was all the counsel that Barry Elder could offer, realizing doubtfully that it was far from a counsel of perfection. "You had better let that depend upon Mrs. Blair."

"I tried to tell her all this," Johnny broke in with an accent of triumph.

But Maria Angelina was looking only at Barry Elder.

"Can you tell me that it is nothing?" she said pitifully, her eyes big and black in her white face. "To have been gone all night with that young man—to have been found by you—another young man? Even if the Americans make light of it—is it not what you call an escapade?"

"I have to admit that it's an escapade—an accidental escapade," Barry qualified carefully. "But I don't know any way out of it—unless we all stand together," he said slowly, "and all pretend that you got lost alone and found alone. That's very simple, really, and I think perhaps it would make things easier for you."

"Now you're saying something!" Johnny was jubilant. "Absolute intelligence—gleam of positive genius. ... She was lost alone. Right after the thunder shower. Missed the others and I went to a high place to look for them and we never found each other. ... Spent the night searching for her," Johnny threw in carelessly, marking out a neat little role for himself. "That's the story—eh, what?"

"Oh could we—could we do that?" Maria Angelina implored with quivering lips.

"Of course we can do that. Only you've got to stick to that story like grim death—no making any little break about climbing the mountain top and things like that, you know."

"You may trust me," said Maria fervently.

"Leave it to your Uncle Dudley," Johnny reassured him. "But, look here, Barry, do you want me to die on your doorstep?" he demanded, his hunger returning as his agitation subsided.

"Oh, sit down, Johnny, and I'll bring you something," said Barry at last. "You had better keep your eye on the trail to see if any one else is coming along. Two in a morning is quite stirring," he said deliberately. "I'm sure the fire is still burning—unless you'd prefer to have him perish of starvation?" he paused to inquire politely of the girl, his twinkling eyes bringing a sudden irrepressible answer to her lips.

"Yes, that will be best for everybody's feelings," he rattled on, from the interior of the cabin, referring not to Johnny's demise but to the construction of a defensive narrative. "Each of you wandered about all night alone. ... Here's some ham, Johnny, and cold toast. There'll be hot coffee in an instant. ... Now remember you crossed the river just after the thunder storm and separated to try different trails. And you never found each other ... That's simple, isn't it? And you, Johnny, climbed the wrong mountain and slept in a shack and came down this morning and returned to the Lodge. You must show up there, worried as blazes and tearing your hair," he instructed the devouring Johnny who merely nodded, tearing wolfishly at the cold toast.

"But before you reach the Lodge I will ease the anxiety there by telephoning that I have just found Maria Angelina," went on Barry, using quite unconsciously the name by which he was thinking of the girl.

He turned to her, "With your permission, I shall say that I have just found you, that I have given you something to eat and while you were resting I went to telephone. Does that make you any happier?"

Her answering look was radiant.

"Now, remember—don't change a word of this. ... Here's your coffee, Johnny. When you reach the Lodge, don't forget that you haven't seen me and that you are still unfed——"

"Unfed is right," said Johnny ungratefully. "Oh, my gosh, I am stiff as a poker. What do you say, Barry, to our doping this out around that fire—or have you got some other little thing in there you are keeping incog as it were?"

Refreshed and unabashed he grinned at them.But Barry did not offer his fire.

"You'd better cut on before you are discovered," he advised. "It's a long way to go—like Tipperary. And I'll hurry off to Peter's place. ... You strike over that shoulder there and down the trail to the right and you'll find the main road. It's shorter than the river. Besides you can't use the river trail or you would have found me. ... Now mind—don't change a word of it."

"Sure, I've got it down. Well, I'll be off then!"

But Johnny was not off. He hesitated a moment, turning very obviously to Maria Angelina, who stood silent upon the doorstep, and it was Barry who took himself suddenly off around the corner of the cabin, with a plate of scraps for the vociferous Sandy.

Embarrassedly Johnny muttered, "I say, Ri-Ri, I'm sorry."

Her expression did not change. She said levelly, "I'm sorry, too. I did not understand."

"I didn't understand, either."Both stood silent. Then he spoke in a hurried, even a flurried way in a very low tone indeed.

"But I—I didn't mean to be a quitter. Look here, I didn't realize that it was just the look of things you were after and not my—my——"

"Your money, Signor?" said Ri-Ri clearly.

He grew red. "I've got some queer experiences," he jerked out.

"I should think, Signor, that you would."

"Oh, hang that Signor! I don't blame you for being a frost, Ri-Ri, for I guess I was pretty rotten to you—but I wasn't throwing you down—honestly. I was just mulish, I guess, because you were trying to stampede me. And I was fighting mad over the entire business and had to take it out on somebody. If you'd just laughed and petted a fellow a little——"

He broke off and looked at her hopefully.

Maria Angelina gave no signs of warmth. Her eyes were enigmatic as black diamonds; and her mouth was a red bud of scorn. Her dignity was immense for all that her braids had come down from their coronet and were hanging childishly about her shoulders; the loose strands fluttering about her face.

Johnny wanted to put his hands out and touch them. And he wanted to grip the small shoulders beneath that middy blouse and shake them out of that aloof perverseness ... they had been such soft, nestling shoulders last night. ...

"You know I—I'm really crazy about you," he said quickly. "Of course you know it—you had a right to know it. I was gone on you from the moment I first saw you. You were so—different. I thought it was just a crush—that I could take it or leave it, you know—but you are different. A man's just got to have you——"

He waited. He had an idea that he had elucidated something. He felt that he had raised an issue. But Maria Angelina stood like the bright eternal snow, unhearing and unheeding and most devilishly cold."Only last night," said Johnny, explaining feverishly again, "you were so funny and grand opera and all and I was mad and disgusted and grouchy and I—I didn't know how much I cared myself. Look here, forget it, will you, and begin again?"

"Begin what again?"

"Well, don't begin, then. Let's finish. Let's get married. I do want you, Ri-Ri—I want you like the very deuce. After you had gone—Gee, it was an awful night when I got over my mad. And coming down the mountain this morning—I didn't know what I was going to find! ... So let's forget it all—and get married," he repeated.

There was a pause. "Do you mean this?" said a still voice.

"Every word. That's what I was planning to tell you when I was running down the mountain this morning. ... And last night—if you'd gone at me differently."

He looked at her. Something in that young figure made him say quickly, "Will you, Ri-Ri?"

"I should like you," said Maria Angelina in a clear implacable little voice, "to say that again, Signor Byrd, if you are in earnest."

"Oh, all right. Come on back, Barry. ... I'm asking Ri-Ri to marry me—and we'll announce the engagement any time she says. ... There. ... Now I've got that off my chest."

"Thank you," said Maria Angelina. She looked neither at the embarrassed Johnny nor the astounded Barry. "I will think about it and I will let you know, Signor Byrd. Now please go."

"Well, of all the——" said Johnny blankly.

Then he looked at her. She was staring before her at something that she alone could see. Her look was rather extraordinary. It occurred to Johnny that after all she had a right to tantalize—and this was really no moment for capitulation.

To-night, now, after dinner, when every one was fed and warm and comfy. ...

Still she might give a fellow a decent look. Hang it, he wasn't a drygoods clerk offering himself!

"Come on, let her alone now," cut in Barry with a certain savage energy that woke wonder in Johnny before it had time to wake resentment.

"We must be off," Barry went on. "Come on, the first part of our way lies together and we'd better hurry or some searching party will find us. Remember, you've only been here an hour," he called back to Maria Angelina. He did not look at her, but added, in that same offhand way, "Better go in and get some sleep and I'll telephone the Lodge from Peter's and have a motor and a horse sent after you."

"I'll come with the motor all right," Johnny promised.

"Don't worry," called back Barry, and waved his hand with an air of gayety but there was no laughter on his face as he started off over the hill with Johnny Byrd.