Brent reached Arden behind a sweaty horse. The meeting with Hewlet was filling him more and more with an agonizing unrest. He wanted to be alone, and he wanted not to be alone. He wanted to think, and he wanted not to think. At least, he could not face the Colonel and the others just now, so turning past the house to the most secluded spot the lawn afforded, he brushed through the screen of cedar branches, felt his way across the tanbark to a seat, and sank into it with a low curse.

Jane had heard the quick approaching steps, and now, because her eyes were accustomed to the shadowy gloom, she recognized at once, not only the man but a measure of his agitation by the way he breathed and jammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. Yet, in a spirit of fun, she remained motionless, wondering how soon he would detect her. Then a deep groan burst from his lips. It was a sound of poignant suffering that went to the depths of her nature. Purposeless as seemed his life, she still felt that it could not be altogether bad. The very charm of his presence, which had a way of stamping him a gentleman born even when in his khaki working clothes, stood for some defense; and, in spite of his laziness, she rather guessed that a generous fund of masculine strength lay within that frame—and of mental strength, if directed toward things of his desire. She knew him to be a dreamer, a scoffer; but had not accredited him with a capacity of worry or grief. The evidence of it now perplexed as much as it stirred her. In the stillness of the place it seemed almost as though she could hear his heart crying beneath its breath in the grip of some remorseless sorrow. At once she was all pity, and slowly, with her eyes resting on his bent head, asked:

"What has happened?"

He sprang up, peered at her, and then tried to laugh.

"You must forgive me," he bowed, "for bringing the dramatic club into your sanctum. I'd no idea anyone was here."

"I know that," she said. Then asked again: "What has happened?"

"You're a bully fellow," he exclaimed in a tone of sincerity, but not entirely free from the false echo of his laugh, "and I'd love to tell you were you not certain to be bored stiff with it. Let me ask you, instead, what you're thinking about in this charmed circle?"

"I'm sure you'd be bored stiff," she drily answered.

He waited a moment. Then:

"It wasn't very courteous of me, I know; but, as a matter of fact, I was just having something out with myself. I've—I haven't been fair to someone; and I'm sorry. So I can't tell you lest I betray."

She sat more erect with a shade of her former sympathy, asking as though it had been a debatable point:

"Then you have a conscience?"

"I have a sense of proportion," he answered. "That's more logical than a conscience."

"Will you ever exercise it for those poor mountain people of mine, who are starving for civilization?"

"I already do—all sorts of ways."

He had himself in hand now, and, crossing over, sat down by her.

"I think you'll be more comfortable on the bench," she suggested, and he returned to the rustic seat.

The pause was rather awkward, and she continued:

"I didn't mean to pry into your—sense of proportion, but thought you might have had bad news. That's why I asked. In a place like this, you know, where people are more or less detached from the usual worldly interests, they sometimes feel as though they might help each other without committing an unpardonable affront. That's all. Have you many more rights of way to secure before the road can go ahead?"

"I should like to think, Miss Jane," he replied, passing the matter of railroads, "that I really could turn to you for help sometimes. If there's a fellow in all the world who needs it, and who abominably hates to let people see he needs it, it's the luckless devil before you."

"If the world is to be kept in ignorance," she smiled, "you mustn't come into dark places and begin swearing unless you know they're uninhabited. It's romantic, but dangerous."

"Romantic things are always dangerous; ever think of that?"

"I haven't, but it isn't true," she answered.

"I can prove it without any trouble, but—" he arose, feeling his pockets, "my—er—cigarettes! Will you wait a few minutes?"

She bowed, and he went out; not for the cigarettes, but to a side window of the house where he beckoned Zack and told him to build, without delay, a toddy. For Brent had been considerably unstrung by the suddenness with which events moved across his stage since sunset, and he turned to this concoction for temporary steadiness. Then he lighted a cigarette and walked back to her in a more composed frame of mind.

"Now," he said, entering the cedars, "with your permission, why are romantic things dangerous?"

"That happened to be your observation, and not interesting," she answered. "You found your cigarettes?"

"You see I'm smoking," he smiled.

"And temporizing," she drily observed. "Really, Mr. McElroy, the truth is not in you!"

"I beg your pardon?" he stiffened slightly.

"I am saying the truth is not in you," she directly answered. "When you first came here tonight, you took a cigarette from your case and lighted it."

"I should never have been so careless if something weren't on my mind," he laughed now. "The truth—the true truth—is that I needed a drink of wicked whiskey. Forgive me?"

"I might not find it so difficult to forgive if, in the future, you either stop trying to deceive me or talking to me; I really don't care which!"

"I say!" he looked up in surprise. "That's pretty straight talk! But it may be a worth-while thing for you to remember that a place does exist where men can't answer every question put to them, and I very much doubt your right to assume so much simply because I choose to keep a few of my affairs to myself. When I first came in here you asked what had happened. That was sympathetic, and I appreciated it; but it was something I couldn't answer, and told you so. You may remember that you seemed to resent that. Your manner was an invitation for me to make up some sort of a fairy-tale to appease your curiosity; and if I had, and you'd found it out, you would just as readily have called me a what's-his-name. You're illogical. You don't seem to share my sense of proportion, at any rate. I wanted a drink—I needed a drink; and I had every right in the world to take it, providing I didn't offend anyone. But it would have offended you—so why announce my intention? If I'm put in a position where some sort of explanation is demanded, and the truth can't in fairness be told, I'm thrown back on the resort which your own sex has taught me—that delectable sex of sweet poisons and silent stilettoes, versatile in the art of lying; queens of the art, indeed—though innocent in it. And here's another plain truth: I'd love to be frank with you, and tell you everything in the world I can, because I think you are square with lots of things which most women side-step. I can't just express it, but you're broadminded and charitable, and smash right out from the shoulder at a thing as if you didn't have skirts on. I don't put it very well, but you know what I mean!"

She thought he did not put it very well, but she knew he put it sincerely, and her reply held a vein of banter which he might not have been expecting just then:

"Perhaps you'll begin by telling about your mysterious dryad in the Forest of Arden!"

"Suspicion," he peered through the gloom at her reprovingly, "is the solvent which disintegrates happiness; and happiness, reduced to its component parts, is trash. Withdraw your question!"

"Happiness cannot be reduced to its component parts," she laughed, "because its ingredients have strayed to us from the four corners of the universe, and cannot ever be returned. I insist upon your answer!"

"You are drawing a long bow," he said more soberly. "You employ femininity's imperfect warrant to shoot at random and trust her gods to put something in the way of getting hit. It's a satire on honesty."

"Never mind about honesty," she laughed again. "Did my gods fail me?"

He puffed a few times at his cigarette, finally taking a deep inhalation and blowing it slowly on the lighted end until the outlines of his face became softly visible in the glow. She saw how serious it seemed, and guessed he was purposely making it so.

"Since you insist—!" he began very carefully. "My dryad in this enchanted wood is the most enticing spirit ever clothed in the graces of woman. That's all."

Again he turned to his cigarette. Again the red glow and the serious face. Again her accurate suspicion.

"If that is all, you're not playing fair. Does she live in a tree?"

"No. She lives in a big white house with big white columns; by night she haunts me, but by day she holds school for mortals in a shady grove."

"I thought you were more original than that," she said, in an expressionless voice. "So we're not to talk any more, are we!"

"But I swear—" he began.

"So do I," she interrupted him, "that you bore me to extinction with things like that, Brent; honestly you do! If you can't be just a little bit sincere, I can't be interested in you."

They had known each other for more than two months; two months of almost daily, unconventional contact, but this was the first time she had called him Brent. It came now as a master-stroke for true understanding, and he threw back his head and laughed.

"My, but you're a corker—beg pardon—I mean a live wire!"

"Overwhelming flattery in either case," she smiled, "and that's the second sincere thing you've said."

"The second! Well, I like that! Perhaps when you begin thinking less about yourself, you'll be able to see more virtues in other people!"

"No one has ever accused me of thinking particularly about myself," she righteously flushed.

"No one has to," he replied, teasingly. "Being a teacher—although a very young and charming one—presupposes egotism."

"Your analysis is shrewd tonight," she coolly observed.

"Not at all," he affably continued. "An egoist, and a woman whose dress is unhooked in the back, are always blissfully unconscious that the world is seeing more of them than they normally would permit."

Her hand stole to the back of her waist. He saw this and again began to laugh, saying:

"I fancy that part is all right. And you know how far I am from meaning the other, too!"

"I'm probably different from most of your friends," she spoke rather quickly, "because I'd rather tell an unpleasant truth than a conventional falsehood. Truth, to me, is the bravest and most beautiful thing in life. And one reason," she added, leaning imperceptibly nearer to see his face, "that women so love it in a man is because it makes of him a sort of restful harbor she can steer to from gathering worries. No man can possibly know how comforting it is for a girl's course to be laid within easy running distance of a safe harbor. He may know of wrecks which occur without them, but seldom considers how easily many of these might have been averted."

"Men sometimes feel that way about girls," he suggested. "Only, in girls, they ask for tenderness."

She took the rebuke, simply adding:

"Girls feel tenderness for shelter, not for a destroying sea."

They were quiet then. The hum of night life was about them, and from the house came faintly the mellow notes of a piano, where the Colonel and Bob were watching out of shadow the enraptured light in Dale's face as Ann introduced him for the first time in his life to that type of instrumental music.

As though this were in some way made known to her, Jane broke the silence.

"A man with an honest purpose in life," she gently said, "with a duty to perform, who sticks to it through thick and thin, admitting no defeat, hammering upon stubborn places, finds in good womankind an ever-ready tenderness. It is the feminine answer to masculine courage."

"There are two kinds of courage," he replied after a polite pause, "just as there are two kinds of duty, and two kinds of pride—each so closely resembling its other self that men, and particularly women, are often misled. When fear tugs at a fellow's heart (and without fear there would be no courage) he is courageous who walks resolutely into every uncertainty if duty chances to be there calling. I think you will agree with me. But what is duty? There's your stumbling block! A false conception of this—a belief that he sees ahead of him what there is not—may cause him to be sacrificed as ignominiously as a bone tossed to a dog; his life would be gobbled up for no better purpose. That's bad business. Humanity would be bankrupt at such a rate. So, if a man of courage be not also a man of foresight—"

"You mean that he would have no excuse for keeping out of danger," she laughed. "That when he saw a duty, or heard its call, he would not be able to justify himself in sitting calmly down to consider if the sacrifice were worth while! Then, indeed, would the world be a sorry place! Personally, I'd rather see fat dogs stalking over the earth than just bones!"

"I hope you are deliberately misconstruing what I have said," he flushed furiously. "Fear of physical and mental pains are just the same, requiring the same courage to go through." He stopped, as though weighing the wisdom of continuing. "Oh, I don't care," he moved uneasily, "I want to tell you nearer what I mean. Once, a long time ago—maybe three years or four—there was a girl for whom I'd have suffered anything and thanked God for the pain. That's loving some! And there was another chap, a sort of friend of mine, and a right decent sort; steady, always at work, and people said she'd make a great mistake by taking me. They saw him only when he was making money by his own grinding, you know, and saw me only when I was spending my allowance. He wanted her, too; and it was a pretty nice race between us, with a foregone conclusion that she'd take one or the other. She didn't pay any attention to what the people said, but one day I picked up some kind of a self-righteous, courageous microbe, and decided the proper way for her—I stepped aside."

"And?" she asked, when he did not continue.

"My courage was there, but my point of view was warped; I was out of focus on duty," he quietly asserted. "She married the other fellow, and it developed too late that his life was a shabby muss. Now her eyes are heavy with an endless sorrow. I think that was when I tried—well, when I began drinking some."

"Wouldn't you have done that anyway?" she asked.

"Perhaps," he slowly answered.

"If he had not married her, and she were here now, would you?"

"Not since you are here," he debonairly smiled.

She might not have heard this from the way she sat, looking down and thinking.

"I suppose," she said at last, "that all men's lives are shabby musses. You may think me unkind, but without a shadow of doubt you would have made her unhappy, too. You are that type."

"I'm very much obliged to you," he murmured. "It seems that I've come to a friend, and found a judge; that my search for sympathy has brought me to a sentence. You're most encouraging, Jane. Perhaps it would be interesting to know how you've found all this out!"

"Oh, I can't say just how," she answered, feeling that his rebuke held more than a share of justice. "It comes from so many small things, which, apart, might be immaterial, but, together, speak volumes and make you quite an impossible quantity in the scheme of domesticity. For instance, the other day, when you had someone's gun in your hands, you deliberately fired at an overflying woodpecker to test your skill. The dead bird was useless. That showed the instinct of a wanton destroyer, and a wanton destroyer, my friend, is not just the safest place for a girl's happiness."

"How do you know I wasn't keeping in practice, in order to become a good protector?" he murmured, but she was not in the mood for flippancy, and continued:

"You shirk responsibilities, and have that dear old Colonel drinking more than he has done in years; while your own hedonism is shocking."

"Well, why not?" he looked up suddenly. "If pleasure's my god, whose business is it?"

"Pride's," she softly answered. "It's the business of Pride, that makes all male human beings men. Girls know, without having to reason, that a man who is lacking in pride is lacking in self respect, and is unworthy of himself; which means he is unworthy of anyone else. That may not be very clear, but it's what I mean. If Dale, now, had the surveying of your road, we could feel certain of it; or if you had more self control like him—though I suppose he was born with it!"

He frowned, and she saw his teeth press hard upon his lower lip. Perhaps that was why she added:

"See what a dependable man he is going to be!—what strength of character!"

He looked away. Realizing how impossible it would be for her to say this about himself, a feeling of rebellion began to stir against the mountaineer. But he indignantly choked it with a ruthless hand, knowing that her comparison, not Dale, must be held responsible. Then for a moment he took a swift glance into the future, wondering how long it might be before he could come abreast of this mountaineer's supposed dependability—and, perhaps, pass on ahead of it! But Brent was not in the habit of gazing future-ward, and he could not hold the focus for long at a time. Now, quietly, he spoke to her, though without interest:

"I'm afraid your three little observations are illogical. In the first place, self control is not a proof of dependability; in the second place, Dale has no more self control than a kitten in a fit; and in the third place, people are not born with self control. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?"

She flushed, but looked across at him smilingly:

"I want to talk about that!"

"Then let's get rid of Dale first. If I read the signs, you've got in that chap a creature of limitless self indulgence. He's crazy to learn, and I've no doubt that already he is studying like a steam engine; but when he wants to do other things he'll do 'em with the same zeal. I gather from the Colonel that he doesn't give a rap for anybody or anything just so he gets to a book. Self control? He doesn't know any more about it than water coming down a rain pipe!"

"Don't you think the desire to study is commendable?"

"Certainly, but it requires no self control. He studies just as he would scratch his hand if it itched. I should call it natural, rather than commendable; or fortunate, if you choose. Jane," he now looked her fully and seriously in the eyes, "there are lots of people who go through life with tense lines about their mouths, saying nothing, never getting into devilment, and the world tiptoes behind them whispering: 'What wonderful self control!' It's all rot! Self control is a thing we unconsciously cultivate from the moment our minds begin to coordinate. It's like building a dam across our hidden river of tendency; and a hit or miss sort of structure it is, too. In one man the current of this tendency may be like a trickling stream, and a handful of materials are enough to keep it in check. In another, it may be a raging torrent, and he may slave night and day, gathering stone and sand, and sealing them with his very blood. But suppose in the end the torrent gets away from him! He fails, you say. Yet is he weaker after that herculean task than the other chap who dammed up his stream of tendency with the side of his boot? He publicly goes under,—yes! But may he not still be finer than his two-by-four brother whose temperament ran only from the ice-box to family prayers and back to the ice-box? I want to tell you," he concluded in the same low, even voice, "that in the Big Summing Up, the Celestial Clearing House will show many a poor gutter-runner more entitled to wear medals for having made a game fight for respectability than some of his anemic superiors who all their days walked slowly, and were called by their fellows examples of great character. Don't be too quick to size up a chap's pace, Lady Jane, until you know how red his blood is, and how much weight he's carrying. I must go now!"

While he had been speaking, the moon, full and mellow, climbed high above the house and shed a mere suggestion of light—a sort of luminous radiance—into the thickly sheltered circle. He stood up quickly with the air of one who had said too much, reached for a cigarette, and then for a match which he could not at once find. She saw that his face was very white and drawn in this ghost-like gloaming.

"I wish you wouldn't," she hesitated. "I like to talk to you tonight."

He turned and looked down at her, as she added:

"You're a curious make-up;—and have some really fine things in you!"

"That starts out well," he laughed, lighting the cigarette and sinking back on the bench.

"Do you ever ask women's permission before smoking?" she asked, a shade offended by the persistent way he ignored her in this regard.

"I didn't think it was quite necessary out doors;—and you might say no!"

"Then you haven't the diplomacy of a true Kentucky gentleman. I'll tell you what one of the most true and gallant of them once told me, and he would be an example for you to follow—in more than one particular. He was over ninety years old, and smoking a pipe—a dear old pipe he was seldom without—when I came up to him. Holding it toward me, he said: 'I shall not ask if I may smoke in your presence! A long time ago that request once met with a denial, so thereafter I merely implored the ladies' permission to burn a little incense to their lovely charms. Nor do I recall,' he smiled, 'one single refusal in the seventy-five years which have passed since then!' This," Jane added, her voice tender with the memory, "was General Simon Bolivar Buckner."

"Well, you've cut a notch too high for me," he answered seriously. "Those few 'fine things' you just accused me of are nothing more than fireflies flashing in a skull compared to that grand old man. How d'you like the simile, by the way? Pretty good, isn't it?"

"A striking picture of you, Brent! I would recognize it anywhere!"

A ripple of good humor played about her mouth which made her dangerously attractive, and, oddly enough, this was caused by that look of seriousness she had seen in him—a look which she had not the slightest doubt portrayed some mental suffering. To anyone else she would have held out her hand and said: "Let me help—I know I can!" But now she could only feel somehow glad to find that he was big enough, and fine enough to suffer. She had not suspected it, and it threw a new light about him. It sent, too, a riot of something pleasant tingling through her blood—as she had felt sometimes at the lookout point above her father's cabin, where she watched for spies while he "mashed" the corn, and the white moonshine dripped, dripped from the rusty worm of his home-made still; when, crouched beneath the stars, her quick ears had caught some faint, suspicious sounds. Ruinous though they might turn out to be, she used to love those tingle-giving sounds. The same sort of thrill now reached past the culture-clothed sentinels around her heart and gave it an honest shake for old time's sake. Slowly she began to smile, and, seeing this, he moodily asked:

"Why are you smiling?"

"I don't know, Brent. I just want to smile, that's all." Then she arose, murmured good night, and went out.

But the branches were still swaying where she had passed when he heard a quick cry of surprise.

"Brent!"

He was beside her in a second, looking over her outstretched arm that pointed toward the thickest portion of the grounds.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I don't know," she whispered. "Someone must have been here, and ran in there!"

He dashed after whatever it was, plunging through the shrubbery and threshing about for several minutes. Once she thought she heard a low cry, or voice, and for awhile he was so quiet that she grew more uneasy; but again the crackling sounds proclaimed him to be on the search, and finally he emerged.

"It's nothing," he said, coming up. "Maybe a dog."

"It couldn't have been a dog. Let's go to the house—it makes me creepy!"

They turned, crossing the little patches of moonlight filtered through the trees upon the violet sprinkled ground. It was a wonderfully seductive spot on a night like this! The mellow tinkle of the piano, arising from Ann's nimble touch, floated out to them;—they might have been walking in an enchanted fairy-land but for the turmoil about his heart and the unrest in her own. Impulsively she faced him:

"What do you think that could have been?"

He was taken unawares, and had of course no suspicion of her cause for nervousness.

"Brent," she said again, "I must know who was there!"

He stood humbly before her with his head bowed. When he spoke his voice was absolutely sincere.

"I can't tell you, Jane."

This magnified her fears, for she thought he was trying mercifully to spare her.

"You must tell me," she urged, betraying her terror by grasping his arm. In his own preoccupation he did not notice this. "You must tell me," she was pleading. "Oh, Brent, if we are ever to be friends, here, tell me! There's a vital reason why I must know at once!"

"But, Jane, I can't," he earnestly replied to her. "It was someone to see me!"

"You are cruel to try to spare me this way," she gasped, and the tears in her voice turned him to a being of great tenderness. "Can't you see I'm desperate?—that your evasions are torturing me? Who was that man?"

"Man?" he stared at her. "It wasn't a man!"

"Oh," she said, loosing his arm and stepping back with a half earnest, half hysterical little laugh. "Oh," she repeated, "I—you must forgive me! I thought it was someone—I thought it might be someone who touched me very closely, Brent!"

He stood looking down at her. How could he know she had been fearful of Potter?

"It seems," he slowly mused, "that we've nearly stumbled on each other's secrets. I didn't suspect you were waiting for anyone, or I shouldn't have stayed."

"But I wasn't," she quickly retorted.

"Certainly," he drily agreed with her. "Very stupid of me to suggest it."

She stepped around in front of him, saying frankly:

"I give you my word of honor that I did not dream anyone would come there, nor is there a man—"

"This isn't necessary," he smiled. "I quite agree with you; and it was nothing that could have touched you at all closely."

She flushed, then turned and started slowly on, saying in a tremulous whisper:

"Very well, you needn't believe me." But just before reaching the house she again turned and faced him. "It hurts, Brent," she faltered, "to know you are thinking unkind things of me! Your own worldliness makes you utterly unsparing!"

"I would rather not have you persist in this," he said gently. "It seems to be one of those cases where you can't tell the truth, so why should you go to the other extreme unnecessarily? I'm not asking you 'what is the matter?' or if you found your cigarettes! Please dismiss it! If you want Dale to meet you in that charmed circle, I'm sure it's a harmless pastime."

She wheeled and left him, quickly running up the steps and into the house; but an echo of the pleading in her voice remained, and now gently pushed aside his ill humor which, in turn, was succeeded by a feeling of joyous relief;—because, hidden in the rhododendron thicket, a girl had whispered for him to have no fear—that Tom Hewlet would not threaten his peace again. In his surprise he had caught her arm and asked why she had come, but she drew back, whispering: "That blind girl! And, Brent, take this!" What had she meant again by the blind girl? And why had she thrust into his hand the little garnet pendant he had given her?

For another minute he pondered over the strange complexity of girls, then sighed and smiled, and by a side door reached his room.