A very warm intimacy developed rapidly between the four friends, and every evening for nearly two weeks found them joyfully, even riotously, making merry together in the Cloud Cote. As Eveley had prophesied, Lieutenant Ames was hopelessly lost from the first, and Marie yielded herself very readily to the charm of an ardent wooing.

But with Eveley, Marie was different, more quiet, less demonstrative, sometimes plainly listless and absent-minded. Eveley ascribed the change to her newly developed interest in Lieutenant Ames, and patiently awaited the outcome of the ripening romance. For Eveley had a deep-seated sympathy with every appeal of love.

For many weeks she had received no word from Miriam Landis. Although she had passed in an hour from all connection with their daily plans, yet she was never far from their thought. Even without their tender and sympathetic memories, they could not have forgotten her, for her husband was a frequent and always tumultuous visitor in the Cote.

He invariably began talking before he was through the window, and his first words were unfailingly the same.

“I can’t stand it, Eveley, I simply can’t stand it. You’ve got to do something about it.”

Again and again he came with this appeal, always overlooking the fact that Eveley had no faintest idea of Miriam’s whereabouts, for, true to her word, she had kept her hiding-place unknown to them all.

Then for several weeks he did not come, and Eveley felt that perhaps he was reconciled, and had returned to his old pursuit of secluded ballroom corners. But Nolan assured her of the injustice of this. Lem had forsaken all his former haunts, and had become a recluse, brooding alone in his deserted home.

“It will do him good, even if it does not last,” Nolan said. “Almost any one would grieve for a woman like Miriam for a few months.”

“Perhaps it is permanent this time, and there will be a reconciliation, and both live happily ever after,” said Eveley, with her usual buoyant faith in the cheerful outcome.

Gordon Cameron she had seen only once since Miriam’s departure, and that was when he came at her request to receive Miriam’s message. He had listened quietly, while she repeated the words of her friend.

“I expected it, of course,” he said at last gravely. “The pity of it is that her little revolution was so hopeless from the beginning. As long as a woman loves her husband, she can not hope for happiness, nor even for forgetfulness.”

“Oh, she does not love her husband any more,” said Eveley confidently. “Not a bit. She is over that long ago.”

“That was the whole trouble,” he insisted. “If she had not loved him, she could have stood it and gone her way. But loving him, the situation was impossible for a woman of spirit and pride. Well, there is always one to pay in every triangle, and this time the bill comes to me. But I had anticipated that from the beginning. She is a wonderful woman.”

“Do you think she will go back to her husband?” asked Eveley breathlessly.

“I hardly think so. She might as well, though; perhaps it would be better. She can not be happy without him, and she was certainly not happy with him. It is only a choice of miseries. As long as she loves him, she will suffer for it. I begin to think that one who loves can not be happy.”

“Oh, yes, one can. One is,” asserted Eveley positively.

“Perhaps I should say, when one is married to it,” he added, with a sober smile for her assurance.

Then he had gone away, and when Lem’s pleadings had suddenly ceased, Eveley felt that the little tempest would live its life, and die its death, and perhaps Miriam at least would find happiness in the lull that followed.

So it was something of a shock to have her pleasant Sunday morning nap disturbed by Lem pounding briskly upon her window.

“Get up, immediately,” he said in an assertive voice quite different from his futile and inane pleadings of a short while before. “Hurry, Eveley, I want you. Dress for motoring, my car is here. I shall wait in the garden—give you ten minutes.”

“He must want me for a bridesmaid for his second wedding,” thought Eveley resentfully, as she hurriedly dressed. But accustomed to obey the calls of friendship, she put on a heavy sport skirt and sweater, and had even pulled her soft hat over her curls before she went to the window.

“I am ready, but I do not approve of it,” she began rather unpleasantly.

“You’d better take a doughnut, or a roll, or an orange, or something, for we have no time for breakfast,” he said in the same assertive voice. “She will not be back until afternoon, Miss Ledesma. Sorry if it interferes with any of your plans, but it can not be helped. Get your coat, quickly, Eveley.”

“It does interfere with our plans,” she said crossly. “We were going up to the mountains for a beefsteak fry with Jimmy and Nolan.”

“Never mind,” said Marie softly. “It may come another Sunday. Mr. Landis seems to need you.”

“All ready, Eveley? Let me help you. Good-by, Miss Ledesma.”

And Eveley found herself marching briskly down the rustic steps away from her own plan and her own desire, and with no knowledge of what lay before her.

“You might at least tell me where we are going,” she said at last, after he had hurried her into the car and started away.

“To see Miriam,” he answered.

“Oh!” Eveley’s voice was a long gasp. She was content to wait after that for his explanation, although it was very slow in coming.

“She is at a ranch up in the mountains,” he said finally. “About fifty miles. We just located her last night. I have been looking, for her all the time. You are going to talk to her for me.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes. I was afraid to come alone for fear she would not see me. She will not refuse to see you.”

“Do you mind telling me what I am going to say to her?”

He was silent a while, thinking. “She refused to take any money from me,” he said, presently. “And she has very little. If she persists in this, she will have to work for her living. Miriam can not do that.”

“No,” said Eveley softly.

“She does not want me for a husband yet,” he said humbly. “And that is right. But I must have Miriam, and she shall never have any one else but me—not that I think she would ever want anybody else. You are to tell Miriam she must come home, and live her life just as she wishes and do as she pleases in everything, and allow me to be a servant for her, to provide what she wants and needs, to take care of her if she is sick. Tell her she may have any friends she likes, lovers even if she wishes, but that she must let me work for her.”

Eveley laid her hand affectionately upon his arm. “I have never done you justice, Lem; forgive me. I think Miriam will come home. I hope she will.”

“She has to. And after a while, when she sees in me what she used to think was there, she will love me again. But in the meantime, I shall ask nothing and expect nothing. But Miriam has got to be in the house.”

Eveley only spoke once after that.

“If she will not come?”

He turned upon her then, a sudden grim smile lighting his face. “I know what I shall do then,” he said. “But you will think it is madness. If she refuses to come, I shall make the necessary arrangements, and kidnap her. She’s got to come.”

Eveley burst into quick laughter at the picture that came to her—a picture of the old-time, immaculate Lem of the ballrooms, carrying his wife away into the mountains to live a cave-man life.

He laughed with her, but the dead-set of his face remained. “It sounds like a joke,” he admitted. “But I have made up my mind. Miriam is mine, and I am going to have her. We’ll just go up into the mountains for a few months, and she will see that I am cured.”

Mile after mile they drove in silence up the steep mountain grades, and after a long time he drew the car off beside the road under a cluster of trees.

“That is the ranch, but I will not drive in. If she saw us coming she would not talk to us, so you must catch her unawares. I shall wait here for you. You’d better not tell her I am going to kidnap her, I think I would rather take her by surprise. She has to come, Eve, now make her see it. Just a servant that is all I want to be to her for a while. But she did love me, and she will again.”

So Eveley walked swiftly up the drive to the house, keeping in the shadow as much as possible, surprised to know that after all the years of her disgust for the husband of her friend, her sympathies now were all with him.

At the kitchen door she assumed her most winsome and disarming smile and asked for Mrs. Landis.

“She does not wish to see any one,” said the woman quickly. “She said particularly that she would not see any callers.”

“But she will see me, I am sure,” said Eveley coaxingly. “You ask her. Tell her it is Eveley Ainsworth. She always sees me.”

“But she told me particularly,” repeated the woman. “And she is not here anyhow. She has gone over the hill. She likes to be among the pines. She is not well, either. I am sorry, miss, but she is not here, and she would not see you if she were.”

“How far is it to the hill? And does she stay long?”

“It is not far,” said the woman, with a wave of her hand toward the east. “But she will not come home for luncheon. She has no appetite. And the boys are out, so I have no one to send for her. I am sorry, miss.”

“You think there is no use to wait, then?”

“Oh, no use at all, miss. She will be gone for hours, and she would not see you if she were here.”

“Tell her I came, won’t you? Eveley Ainsworth. Thank you.”

And with another disarming smile Eveley turned back to the path. But as soon as she was out of sight of the house, she slipped off through the trees, and started on a light run for the pine grove on the hill to the east.

“As Lem says, poor thing, she has to,” she said to herself, with a smile. And very soon she was among the big pines, looking eagerly back and forth, quite determined not to return to Lem until she had seen Miriam and talked her into reason. And so at last she came upon her, sitting somberly under the big trees, her back against a huge boulder, staring away down the mountains into the haze of the sea in the west, where her husband lived in the city by the bay.

“Miriam,” Eveley called in a ringing voice, and ran joyously down the path.

Miriam sprang up to meet her. “Eveley!” she cried, catching her hands eagerly. And then, “Have you seen—Lem? Is he—all right?”

Eveley held her hands a moment, looking searchingly into the thin face and the shadowy eyes.

“Revolutions are hard work, aren’t they?” she asked with deep sympathy.

“Oh, Eveley, they are killing, heart-breaking, soul-wracking,” she cried. “And yet of course it was right and best for me to come,” she added gravely. “Does Lem seem to—miss me?” And there was wistfulness in her voice.

“He is out there now,” said Eveley, waving her hand toward the road. “He brought me up.”

At the first word, Miriam had turned quickly, ready to run down—not to the house for shelter, but to the car for comfort. But she stopped in a moment, and came back.

“I shall not see him, of course,” she said quietly.

“I brought a message from him. He says you must come home, Miriam, he says his madness is all purged away, and that you are his and he must have you. But he wants you to come and live your own life and do as you wish, only allowing him, to stay in the home not as your husband, but as your servant until you learn to love and trust him again. He says you must come, and let him work for you, and take care of you.”

Miriam’s face was very white, and her eyes deep wells of pain.

“Poor Lem!” she said tenderly. “So sweet—and so weak.”

“I think he is finding strength,” said Eveley.

For a long time, the two girls stood there, side by side, Eveley looking into the haze of the sea miles below, Miriam staring down through the pines to where she knew a car might be waiting in the shadows.

“We must not keep him waiting,” she said at last.

Without a word, they turned, hand in hand and started down to the road again. When she saw the little, well-known car beneath the trees, and Lem standing rigid beside it, she caught her breath suddenly. Eveley would have hung back, to let her greet her husband alone, but Miriam clung to her hand and pulled her forward.

He came to meet them, awkwardly, a gleam of hope in his eyes, but meekness in his manner. He held out his hand, and Miriam with a little flutter dropped her own into it, pulling it quickly away again.

“Are you—all right, Lem? You look—thin,” she said with shy solicitude.

“I feel thin,” he replied grimly. “Are—you coming with us?”

“Yes, of course,” said Eveley.

“Yes, of course,” Miriam echoed faintly.

“Shall I drive?” suggested Eveley, anticipating complete reconciliation for the two in their first moment of privacy.

“I will drive,” said Lem. “You girls sit in the back. Did Eveley explain that I only expect to be—your driver, and your valet, and your servant—for a while.”

Tears brightened in Miriam’s eyes. “Oh, Lem,” she cried, holding out her hands. “How can people talk of servants who have loved—as we have loved?”

Eveley immediately went into a deep and concentrated study of the rear tires, for Miriam was close in her husband’s arms, and his tears were falling upon her fragrant curls.

After a while, he held her away from him and looked into her tender face.

“It isn’t—you aren’t coming, then, just because it is your duty to give me every chance,” he whispered.

“Oh, no, dear, just because I love you.”

Eveley was still utterly immersed in the condition of the tires.

“We’ll try it again, Lem—”

“Oh, Miriam,” he broke in, “it isn’t any trial this time. This is marriage.”

Eventually they got started toward home and had driven many miles before Miriam noticed that her uncovered hair was blowing in the wind, and remembered that she had left the ranch without notice and that all her things were there. But what were simple things and formal notices when human hearts were finding happiness and faith?

In the Cloud Cote, Eve’s friends were patiently awaiting her return. Nolan was reading poetry aloud to himself in the roof garden, and Lieutenant Ames was laboriously picking chords on the piano, with Marie near him strumming on the mandolin.

The first creak of the rustic stair brought them all to the landing to greet her.

“Reconciliation,” shouted Nolan, before she was half-way up. “Miriam is home, and they have already lived happily ever after.”

Eveley began immediately to give an account of the day’s happenings standing motionless on the third step from the top until she finished her recital.

Then she went back down, and gave an impatient tap on the seventh stair.

“Well, you started something,” she said to it solemnly. “And you ought to be satisfied now, if anybody is. To-morrow I shall crown you with a wreath of laurel.”

Then she went up again. “Does this do anything to your theory about duty?” asked Nolan. “Does it prove it, or disprove it, or what? I can not seem to get any connection.”

“But there is a connection,” she said, with a smile. “It absolutely and everlastingly proves the Exception.”

“Eveley Ainsworth, don’t ever say exception again until you can explain it,” cried Nolan. “I dream of exceptions by night, and I legalize them by day. Be a nice girl, and do a good deed this Sabbath Day by expounding the virtues of the One Exception.”

But Eveley was hungry, and said she could not expound anything when her system clamored for tea.

Eveley’s Sabbath, however, was not yet ended. While she was blissfully sipping her tea, the three she loved best in the world about her, there came a gentle tap upon her window, and Mrs. Severs walked in.

“So sorry to bother you, Miss Ainsworth,” she began apologetically, “but I want to ask a favor. Father is moving back with us to-day, and—”

“What!”

“Yes, indeed he is,” she cried blithely. “I was so lonesome, and some days I am so ill, that I asked him as a personal favor if he wouldn’t come and try me just once more, and he said, Holy Mackinaw! he had been aching to do that very thing.”

“Well,” Eveley said judiciously, “I suppose you will all be satisfied now that you are back in your old rut wretchedly doing your duty by each other.”

“I should say not,” denied Mrs. Severs promptly. “I asked father to come because I—like him awfully much, and it is so lonely without him, and he is coming because he missed us and is fond of us, and there isn’t any duty about it. You have converted us. We do not believe in duty.”

“And the favor?”

“Yes—father is bringing the flivver of course—and the garage is so big. Do you mind if we keep it there with your car? We will pay any extra rent, of course.”

“Keep it there by all means,” said Eveley generously. “And there is no rent. And when I get stuck anywhere I shall expect you to tow me home for love.” And when Mrs. Severs had gone, Eveley said: “Make another pot of tea, please, Marie. Make two pots—three if you like.”

“Pretty hard to keep some people properly adjusted, isn’t it?” asked Nolan soberly, but with laughter in his eyes.

“What is proved by the case of Father-in-law and the Bride, Eveley?” asked Marie with a soft teasing smile as she refilled Eveley’s cup.

But Eveley went into a remote corner of the room, and brandished the bread knife for protection, before she cried triumphantly:

“The Exception. It is another positive proof of the utter efficacy of my One Exception.”