When Sanford, after dining, rang her bell, Mrs. Leroy was seated on the veranda that overlooked the garden,—a wide and inviting veranda, always carpeted in summer with mats and rugs, and made comfortable with cane chairs and straw divans that were softened into luxurious delights by silk cushions. During the day the sunshine filtered its way between the thickly matted vines, lying in patterns on the floor, or was held in check by thin Venetian blinds. At night the light of a huge eight-sided lantern festooned with tassels shed its glow through screens of colored gauze.

Mrs. Leroy was dressed in a simple gown of white crÊpe, which clung and wrinkled about her slight figure, leaving her neck and arms bare. On a low table beside her rested a silver tray with a slender-shaped coffee-pot and tiny egg-shell cups and saucers.

She looked up at him, smiling, as he pushed aside the curtains. “Two lumps, Henry?” she called, holding the sugar-tongs in her hand. Then, as the light of the lantern fell upon his face, she exclaimed, “Why, what’s the matter? You are worried: is there fresh trouble at the Ledge?” and she rose from her chair.

“No; only Carleton,” he replied, looking down at her. “He holds on to that certificate, and I can get no money until he gives it up; yet I have raised the concrete six inches to please him. I wired Captain Joe yesterday to see him at once and to get his answer,—yes or no. What do you suppose he replied? ‘Tell him he don’t own the earth. I’ll sign it when I get to it.’ Not another word, nor would he give any reason for not signing it.”

“Why don’t you appeal to the Board? General Barton would not see you suffer an unjust delay. I’ll write him myself,” she said, sitting bolt upright on the divan.

Sanford smiled. Her rising anger soothed him as flattery might have done at another time. He felt in it a proof of how close to her heart she really held his interests and his happiness.

“That would only prolong the agony, and might lose us the season’s work. The Board is always fair and honest, only it takes so long for it to move.” As he spoke he piled the cushions high behind her head, and drew a low chair opposite to her. “It’s torture to a contractor who is behind time,” he continued, flecking the ashes of his cigar into his saucer. “It means getting all tangled up in the red tape of a government bureau. I must give up my holiday and find Carleton; there is nothing else to be done now. I leave on the early train to-morrow. But what a rest this is!” he exclaimed, breaking into the strained impetuosity of his own tones with a long-drawn sigh of relief, as he looked about the dimly lighted veranda. “Nothing like it anywhere.”

As he spoke his eyes wandered over her dainty figure, half reclining before him,—the delicately modeled waist, the shapely wrists, and the tiny slippers peeping beneath the edge of her dress that fell in folds to the floor. “Another new gown, I see?”

“Never mind about my gown. I want to hear more about this man Carleton,” she said. Her face was alight with the pleasure of his tribute, but she spoke as though she had hardly heard it. “What have you done to him to make him hate you?”

“Nothing but try to keep him from ruining the work.”

“And you told him he was ruining it?”

“Certainly; there was nothing else to do. He’s got the concrete now six inches out of level; you can see it plainly at low water.”

“No wonder he takes his revenge,” she said, cutting straight into the heart of the matter with that marvelous power peculiar to some women. “What else has gone wrong?” She meant him to tell her everything, knowing that to let him completely unburden his mind would give him the only real rest that he needed. She liked, too, to feel her influence over him. That he always consulted her in such matters was to Kate one of the keenest pleasures that his friendship brought.

“Everything, I sometimes think. We are very much behind. That concrete base should have been finished two weeks ago. The equinoctial gale is nearly due. If we can’t get the first two courses of masonry laid by the middle of November, I may have to wait until spring for another payment, and that about means bankruptcy.”

“What does Captain Joe think?”

“He says we shall pull through if we have no more setbacks. Dear old Captain Joe! nothing upsets him. We certainly have had our share of them this season: first it was the explosion, and now it is Carleton’s spite.”

“Suppose you do lose time, Henry, and do have to wait until spring to go on with the work. It will not be for the first time.” There was a sympathetic yet hopeful tone in her voice. “When you sunk the coffer-dam at Kingston, three years ago, and it lay all winter in the ice, didn’t you worry yourself half sick? And yet it all came out right. Oh, you needn’t raise your eyebrows; I saw it myself. You know you are better equipped now, both in experience and in means, than you were then. Make some allowance for your own temperament, and please don’t forget the nights you have lain awake worrying over nothing. It will all come out right.” She leaned toward him and laid her hand on his, as an elder sister might have done, and in a gayer tone added, “I’m going to Medford soon, myself, and I’ll invite this dreadful Mr. Carleton to come over to luncheon, and you’ll get your certificate next day. What does he look like?”

Sanford broke into a laugh. “You wouldn’t touch him with a pair of tongs, and I wouldn’t let you,—even with them.”

“Then I’ll do it, anyway, just to show you how clever I am,” she retorted, with a pretty, bridling toss of her head. She had taken her hand away. Sanford still held his own extended.

Kate’s tact was having its effect. Under the magic of her sympathy his cares had folded their tents. Carleton was fast becoming a dim speck on the horizon, and his successive troubles were but a string of camels edging the blue distance of his thoughts.

It was always like this. She never failed to comfort and inspire him. Whenever his anxieties became unbearable it was to Kate that he turned, as he had done to-night. The very touch of her soft hand, so white and delicate, laid upon his arm, and the exquisite play of melody in her voice, soothed and strengthened him. Things were never half so bad as they seemed, when he could see her look at him mischievously from under her lowered eyelids as she said, “Mercy, Henry! is that all? I thought the whole lighthouse had been washed away.” And he never missed the inspiration of the change that followed,—the sudden quiet of her face, the very tensity of her figure, as she added in earnest tones, instinct with courage and sympathy, some word of hopeful interest that she of all women best knew how to give.

With the anxieties dispelled which had brought him hurrying to-night to Gramercy Park, they both relapsed into silence,—a silence such as was common to their friendship, one which was born neither of ennui nor of discontent, the boredom of friends nor the poverty of meagre minds, but that restful silence which comes only to two minds and hearts in entire accord, without the necessity of a single spoken word to lead their thoughts; a close, noiseless fitting together of two temperaments, with all the rough surfaces of their natures worn smooth by long association each with the other. In such accord is found the strongest proof of true and perfect friendship. It is only when this estate no longer satisfies, and one or both crave the human touch, that the danger-line is crossed. When stealthy fingers set the currents of both hearts free, and the touch becomes electric, discredited friendship escapes by the window, and triumphant love enters by the door.

The lantern shed its rays over Kate’s white draperies, warming them with a pink glow. The smoke of Sanford’s cigar curled upward in the still air and drifted out into the garden, or was lost in the vines of the jessamine trailing about the porch. Now and then the stillness was broken by some irrelevant remark suggested by the perfume of the flowers, the quiet of the night, the memory of Jack’s and Helen’s happiness; but silence always fell again, except for an occasional light tattoo of Kate’s dainty slipper on the floor. A restful lassitude, the reaction from the constant hourly strain of his work, came over Sanford; the world of perplexity seemed shut away, and he was happier than he had been in weeks. Suddenly and without preliminary question, Mrs. Leroy asked sharply, with a strange, quivering break in her voice, “What about that poor girl Betty? Has she patched it up yet with Caleb? She told me, the night she stayed with me, that she loved him dearly. Poor girl! she has nothing but misery ahead of her if she doesn’t.” She spoke with a certain tone in her voice that showed but too plainly the new mood that had taken possession of her.

“Pity she didn’t find it out before she left him!” exclaimed Sanford.

“Pity he didn’t do something to show his appreciation of her, you mean!” she interrupted, with a quick toss of her head.

“You are all wrong, Kate. Caleb is the gentlest and kindest of men. You don’t know that old diver, or you wouldn’t judge him harshly.”

“Oh, he didn’t beat her, I suppose. He only left her to get along by herself. I wish such men would take it out in beating. Some women could stand that better. It’s the cold indifference that kills.” She had risen from her seat, and was pacing the floor of the veranda.

“Well, that was not his fault, Kate. While the working season lasts he must be on the Ledge. He couldn’t come in every night.”

“That’s what they all say! If it’s not one excuse, it’s another. I’m tired to death of hearing about men who would rather make money than make homes. Now that he has driven her out of her wits by his brutality, he closes his door against her, even when she crawls back on her knees. But don’t you despise her.” She stood before him, looking down into his face for a moment. “Be just as sweet and gentle to her as you can. If she ever goes wrong again, it will be the world’s fault or her husband’s,—not her own. Tell her from me that I trust her and believe in her, and that I send her my love.”

Sanford listened to her with ill-concealed admiration. It was when she was defending or helping some one that she appealed to him most. At those times he recognized that her own wrongs had not imbittered her, but had only made her the more considerate.

“There’s never a day you don’t teach me something,” he answered quietly, his eyes fixed on her moving figure. “Perhaps I have been a little hard on Betty, but it’s because I’ve seen how Caleb suffers.”

She stopped again in her walk and leaned over the rail of the veranda, her chin on her hand. Sanford watched her, following the bend of her exquisite head and the marvelous slope of her shoulders. He saw that something unusual had stirred her, but he could not decide whether it was caused by the thought of Betty’s misery or by some fresh sorrow of her own. He threw away his cigar, rose from his chair, and joined her at the railing. He could be unhappy himself and stand up under it, but he could not bear to see a shade cross Kate’s face.

“You are not happy to-night,” he said.

She did not answer.

Sanford waited, looking down over the garden. He could see the shadowy outlines of the narrow walks and the white faces of the roses drooping over the gravel. When he spoke again there were hesitating, halting tones in his voice, as if he were half afraid to follow the course he had dared to venture on.

“Is Morgan coming home, Kate?”

“I don’t know,” she replied dreamily, after a pause.

“Didn’t he say in his last letter?”

“Oh yes; answered as he always does,—when he gets through.”

“Where is he now?”

“Paris, I believe.”

She had not moved nor lifted her chin from her hand.

Minutes went by without her speaking again. A strange hush fell about them. Sanford could hear the click of the old clock in the hall, and the monotonous song of the crickets in the grass below.

A sense of great remoteness from her came over him. It was as though she had gone into a room alone with her griefs and her sobs, and had locked the door behind her. He had not meant to wound her by his questions, only to discover whether some new phase of the old grief were hurting her. If it were anything else but the sorrow he never touched, he stood ready to give her all his strength.

He looked at her intently. She had never appeared to him so beautiful, so pathetic: there was a hopeless weariness in her pose that vibrated through him as nothing had done in months. The change in her mood had come suddenly, as all changes did in her, but to-night he seemed unable to meet them. A great rush of feeling surged over him. He stepped closer, lifting his hand to lay on her head. Then, with an abrupt gesture, he turned and began pacing the veranda, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind his back. Strange, unutterable thoughts whirled through his brain; unbidden, unspeakable words crowded in his throat. He made one great effort at self-control, stopped once more, this time laying his hand upon her shoulder. He felt in his heart that it was the same old sorrow which now racked her, but an uncontrollable impulse swept him on. All the restraint of years seemed slipping from him.

“Kate, what is it? You break my heart. Is there something else to worry you,—something you haven’t told me?”

She shivered slightly as she felt the hand tighten on her shoulder. Then a sudden, tingling thrill ran through her.

“I have never any right to be unhappy when I have you, Henry. You are all the world to me,—all I have.”

It was not the answer he had expected. For an instant the blood left his face, his heart stood still.

Kate raised her head, and their eyes met.

There are narrow paths in life where one fatal step sends a man headlong. There are eyes in women’s heads as deep as the abyss below. Hers were wide open, with the fearless confidence of an affection she was big enough to give. He saw down into their depths, and read there—as they flashed toward him in intermittent waves over the barrier of the reserve she sometimes held—love, truth, and courage. To disturb these, even by the sympathy she longed to receive and he to give, might, he knew, endanger the ideal of that loyalty to another in her which he venerated most. To go behind it and break down the wall of that self-control of hers which held in check the unknown, untouched springs of her heart might loosen a flood that would wreck the only bark which could keep them both afloat on the troubled waters of life,—their friendship.

Sanford bent his head, raised her hand to his lips, kissed it reverently, and without a word walked slowly toward his chair.

As he regained his seat the butler pushed aside the light curtains of the veranda, and in his regulation monotone announced, “Miss Shirley, Major Slocomb, and Mr. Hardy.”

“My dear madam,” broke out the major in his breeziest manner, before Mrs. Leroy could turn to greet him, “what would life be in this bake-oven of a city but for the joy of yo’r presence? And Henry! You here, too? Do you know that that rascal Jack has kept me waiting for two hours while he took Helen for a five minutes’ walk round the square, or I would have been here long ago. Where are you, you young dog?” he called to Jack, who had lingered in the darkened hall with Helen.

“What’s the matter now, major?” inquired Jack, shaking hands with Mrs. Leroy, and turning again toward the Pocomokian. “I asked your permission. What would you have me do? Let Helen see nothing of New York, because you”—

“Do hush up, cousin Tom,” said Helen, pursing her lips at the major. “We stayed out because we wanted to, didn’t we, Jack? Don’t you think he is a perfect ogre, Mrs. Leroy?”

“He forgets his own younger days, my dear Miss Shirley,” she answered. “He shan’t scold you. Henry, make the major join you in a cigar, while I give Miss Helen a cup of coffee.”

“They are both forgiven, my dear madam, when so lovely an advocate pleads their cause,” said the Pocomokian grandiloquently, bowing low, his hand on his chest. “Thank you; I will join you,” and leaned over Sanford as he spoke, and lighted a cigar in the blue flame of the tiny silver lamp.

It was delightful to note how the coming alliance of the Hardy and Slocomb families had developed the paternal, not to say patriarchal attitude of the major toward his once boon companion. He already regarded Jack as his own son,—somebody to lean upon in his declining years, a prop and a staff for his old age. He had even sketched out in his mind a certain stately mansion on the avenue, to say nothing of a series of country-seats,—one on Crab Island in the Chesapeake,—all with porticoes and an especial suite of rooms on the ground floor; and he could hear Jack say, as he pointed them out to his visitors, “These are for my dear old friend Major Slocomb of Pocomoke,—member of my wife’s family.” He could see his old enemy, Jefferson, Jack’s servant, cowed into respectful obedience by the new turn in his master’s affairs, in which the Pocomokian had lent so helpful a hand.

“She is the child of my old age, so to speak, suh, and I, of co’se, gave my consent after great hesitation,” he would frequently say, fully persuading himself that Helen had really sought his approbation, and never for one moment dreaming that, grateful as she was to him for his chaperonage of her while in New York, he was the last person in the world she would have consulted in any matter so vital to her happiness.

Jack accepted the change in the major’s manner with the same good humor that seasoned everything that came to him in life. He had known the Pocomokian for too many years to misunderstand him now, and this new departure, with its patronizing airs and fatherly oversight, only amused him.

Mrs. Leroy had drawn the young girl toward the divan, and was already discussing her plans for the summer.

“Of course you are both to come to me this fall, when the beautiful Indian summer weather sets in. The Pines is never so lovely as then. You shall sail to your heart’s content, for the yacht is in order; and we will then see what this great engineer has been doing all summer,” she added, glancing timidly from under her dark eyelashes at Sanford. “Mr. Leroy’s last instructions were to keep the yacht in commission until he came home. I am determined you shall have one more good time, Miss Helen, before this young man ties you hand and foot. You will come, major?”

“I cannot promise, madam. It will depend entirely on my arrangin’ some very important matters of business. I hope to be able to come for perhaps a day or so.”

Jack looked at Sanford and smiled. Evidently Mrs. Leroy did not know the length of the major’s “day or so.” Nor that it was apt to depend upon the date of the next invitation. He was still staying with Jack, and had been there since the spring.

Buckles, the butler, had been bending over the major as that gentleman delivered himself of this announcement of his hopes. When he had filled to the brim the tiny liqueur glass, the major—perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness—said, “Thank you, suh,” at which Buckles’s face hardened. Such slips were not infrequent. The major was, in fact, always a little uncomfortable in Buckles’s presence. Jack, who had often noticed his attitude, thought that these conciliatory remarks were intended as palliatives to the noiseless English flunky with the immovable face and impenetrable manner. The Pocomokian never extended such deference to Sam, Sanford’s own servant, or even to Jefferson. “Here, Sam, you black scoundrel, bring me my hat,” he would say whenever he was leaving Sanford’s apartments, at which Sam’s face would relax quite as much as Buckles’s had hardened. But then the major knew Sam’s kind, and Sam knew the major, and, strange to say, believed in him.

When Buckles had retired, Sanford started the Pocomokian on a discussion in which all the talking would fall to the latter’s share. Mrs. Leroy turned to Helen and Jack again. There was no trace, in her voice nor on her features, of the emotion that had so stirred her. All that side of her nature had been shut away the moment her guests appeared.

“Don’t mind a word Jack says to you, my dear, about hurrying up the wedding-day,” she laughed, in a half-earnest and altogether charming way,—not cynical, but with a certain undercurrent of genuine anxiety in her voice, all the more keenly felt by Sanford, who waited on every word that fell from her lips. “Put it off as long as possible. So many troubles and disappointments come afterwards, and it is so hard to keep everything as it should be. There is no happier time in life than that just before marriage. Oh, you needn’t scowl at me, you young Bluebeard; I know all about it, and you don’t know one little bit.”

Helen looked at Jack in some wonder. She was at a loss to know how much of the talk was pure badinage, and how much, perhaps, the result of some bitter worldly experience. The young girl shuddered, yet without knowing what inspired the remark or what lay behind it. But she laughed quite heartily, as she said, “It is all true, no doubt; only I intend to begin by being something of a tyrant myself, don’t I, Jack?”

Before Jack could reply, Smearly, who had hurried by Buckles, entered unannounced, and with a general smile of recognition, and two fingers to the major, settled himself noiselessly in an easy-chair, and reached over the silver tray for a cup. It was a house where such freedom was not commented on, and Smearly was one of those big Newfoundland-dog kind of visitors who avail themselves of all privileges.

“What is the subject under discussion?” the painter asked, as he dropped a lump of sugar into his cup and turned to his hostess.

“I have just been telling Miss Shirley how happy she will make us when she comes to The Pines this autumn.”

“And you have consented, of course?” he inquired carelessly, lifting his bushy eyebrows.

“Oh yes,” answered Helen, a faint shadow settling for a moment on her face. “It’s so kind of Mrs. Leroy to want me. You are coming, too, are you not, Mr. Sanford?” and she moved toward Henry’s end of the divan, where Jack followed her. She had never liked Smearly. She did not know why, but he always affected her strangely. “He looks like a bear,” she once told Jack, “with his thick neck and his restless movements.”

“Certainly, Miss Helen, I am going, too,” replied Sanford. “I tolerate my work all summer in expectation of these few weeks in the autumn.”

The young girl raised her eyes quickly. Somehow it did not sound to her like Sanford’s voice. There was an unaccustomed sense of strain in it. She moved a little nearer to him, however, impelled by some subtle sympathy for the man who was not only Jack’s friend, but one she trusted as well.

“Lovely to be so young and hopeful, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Leroy to Smearly, with a movement of her head toward Helen. “Look at those two. Nothing but rainbows for her and Jack.”

“Rainbows come after the storm, my dear lady, not before,” rejoined Smearly. “If they have any prismatics in theirs, they will appear in a year or two from now.” He had lowered his voice so that Helen should not hear.

“You never believe in anything. You hate women,” said Mrs. Leroy impatiently in an undertone.

“True, but with some exceptions; you, for instance,” with a mock bow. “But why fool ourselves, my dear lady? The first year is one of sugar-plums, flowers, and canary-birds. We can’t keep our hands off them; we love them so we want to eat them up.”

“Just like any other wild beast,” interrupted Mrs. Leroy, with a gurgling laugh, her head bent coquettishly on one side.

“The second year both are pulling in opposite directions.” (He affected not to have heard her thrust.) “Then comes a snap of the matrimonial cord, and over they go. Of course neither of these two turtle-doves has the slightest idea of anything of the kind. They expect to go on and on and on, like the dear little babes in the wood; but they won’t, all the same. Some day an old crow of an attorney will come and cover them over with dried briefs, and that will be the last of it.”

Sanford took no part in the general talk. He was listless, absorbed. He felt an irresistible desire to be alone, and stayed on only because Helen’s many little confidences, told to him in her girlish way, as she sat beside him on the divan, required but an acquiescing nod now and then, or a random reply, which he could give without betraying himself.

He was first of all the guests to rise. In response to Mrs. Leroy’s anxious glance, as he bade her good-night between the veranda curtains, he explained, in tones loud enough to be heard by everybody, that it was necessary to make an early start in the morning for the Ledge, and that he had some important letters to write that night.

“Don’t forget to telegraph me if you get the certificate,” was all she said.

Helen and Jack followed Sanford. They too wanted to be alone; that is, together,—in their case the same thing.

Once outside and under the trees of the park, Helen stopped in a secluded spot, their shadows under the electric light flecking the pavement, took the lapels of Jack’s coat in her hands, and said, “Jack, dear, I wasn’t happy there to-night. She never could have loved anybody.”

“Who, darling?”

“Why, Mrs. Leroy. Did you hear what she said?”

“Yes, but it was only Kate. That’s her way, Helen. She never means half she says.”

“Yes, but the way she said it, Jack. She doesn’t know what love means. Loving is not being angry all the time. Loving is helping,—helping everywhere and in everything. Whatever either needs the other gives. I can’t say it just as I want to, but you know what I mean. And that Mr. Smearly; he didn’t think I heard, but I did.”

“Dear heart,” said Jack, smoothing her cheek with his hand, “don’t believe everything you hear. You are not accustomed to the ways of these people. Down in your own home in Maryland people mean what they say; here they don’t. Smearly is all right. He was ‘talking through his hat,’ as the boys say at the club,—that’s all. You’d think, to hear him go on, that he was a sour, crabbed old curmudgeon, now, wouldn’t you? Well, you never were more mistaken in your life. Every penny he can save he gives to an old sister of his, who hasn’t seen a well day for years. That’s only his talk.”

“But why does he speak that way, then? When people love as they ought to love, every time a disappointment in the other comes, it is just one more opportunity to help,—not a cause for ridicule. I love you that way, Jack; don’t you love me so?” and she looked up into his eyes.

“I love you a million ways, you sweet girl,” and, with a rapid glance about him to see that no one was near, he slipped his arm about her and held her close to his breast.

He felt himself lifted out of the atmosphere of romance in which he had lived for months. This gentle, shrinking Southern child whom he had loved and petted and smothered with roses, this tender, clinging girl who trusted him so implicitly, was no longer his sweetheart, but his helpmate. She had all at once become a woman,—strong, courageous, clear-minded, helpful, ready to lead him if need be.

A new feeling rose in his heart and spread itself through every fibre of his being,—a feeling without which love is a plaything. It was reverence.

When Sanford reached his apartments Sam was waiting for him, as usual. The candles were lighted instead of the lamp. The windows of the balcony were wide open.

“You need not wait, Sam; I’ll close the blinds,” he said, as he stepped out and sank into a chair.

Long after Sam had gone he sat there without moving, his head bent, his forehead resting on his hand. He was trying to pick up the threads of his life again, to find the old pattern which had once guided him in his course, and to clear it from the tangle of lines that had suddenly twisted and confused him.

For a long time he saw nothing but Kate’s eyes as they had met his own, with the possibilities which he had read in their depths. He tried to drive the picture from him; then baffled by its persistence he resolutely faced it; held it as it were in his hands, and, looking long and unflinchingly at it, summoned all his courage.

He had read Kate’s heart in her face. He knew that he had revealed his own. But he meant that the future should be unaffected by the revelations made. The world must never share her confidence nor his, as it would surely do at their first false step. It should not have the right to turn and look, and to wonder at the woman whom he was proud to love. That open fearlessness which all who knew her gloried in should still be hers. He realized the value of it to her, and what its loss would entail should a spoken word of his rob her of it, or any momentary weakness of theirs deprive her of the strength and comfort which his open companionship could give.

No! God willing, he would stand firm, and so should she.

An hour later he was still there, his unlighted cigar between his lips, his head on his hands.