Joy had no idea in the world how she got into the car. John's guiding hand on her arm probably was all that saved her from stumbling into the hedge, or trying to walk up a tree, she thought afterwards. She was on the back seat, finally, with John by her. She laid her head back with a little tired half-moan, and felt John's strong, comforting arm drawing her over so that she could rest against his shoulder.

"You poor little girl, you're all worn out," she heard him say tenderly. "But I was proud of you, little Joy. I didn't know what a wonderful person I had found.... Little fairy princess!"

Ten minutes earlier the note of affection and pride in his voice would have made Joy so deliriously happy that she wouldn't have known what to do. But ... Gail knew ... Gail knew all about it all! ... How could men! And she had said she was going to give a tea. That probably meant that she was going to tell everybody everything, and laugh about it.

She was tired, and the shock of Gail's words had taken all the capacity for action out of her. She knew that if she'd had any proper feelings she would have moved coldly away from John, and accused him of betraying her to Gail, and demanded why he had done it. Evidently she had no proper feelings. You can't have, if you love people hard. She merely lay against John's strong, broad shoulder that felt so alive and comforting, and thought that this was the last time she would ever lean against it, or feel, as she always did when he touched her, as if there was some one who would look after her, and stand between her and every one else. She could not talk.

When they reached the Harrington house Allan took the car around to the garage at the back, himself, and Phyllis said she would stay in the car with him while he locked the garage. The men began to tease her for the idea she had offered, but Joy, hearing Phyllis laughingly defend herself, and explain what she really meant, knew that it was Phyllis' way of giving John a chance to say good-night to her alone.

"Dear Phyllis!" she thought, with a gush of gratitude in her heart that there was one person in the world so unfailingly thoughtful and honest and dependable. The world did not quite go down in ruins while Phyllis stood her friend.

"Dear Phyllis!" she heard John's gay voice say, as if in echo of her own thoughts. "She knew I'd want a chance to see you alone a minute.... What an awful amount of people too many there are in the world, aren't there, kiddie? I'm beginning to think with yearning of Crusoe's isle, and a barbed-wire fence around that."

He drew her into the shadow of the vines on the porch, and took her in his arms. ... And he had told Gail ... oh, how could men?

For a moment she stood, passive. Then the nearness of him, and the cruel last-timeness of it all, swept over her again, and she threw her arms around his neck convulsively, and kissed him over and over again. She wanted it to remember.

"Good-by, my dearest!" she whispered.

"Not good-by, dear—good-night!" he answered her. "It's a long time till tomorrow, but thank goodness, it's coming. And all the tomorrows after that."

"No—" she started to say, when she heard footsteps, and John released her.

"It's a very dark night," said Allan sadly. "I couldn't see my best friend, even if he were on my own porch. Coming in, John?"

"Allan, you have the tact of Talleyrand, or whoever it was they used to kick," responded John amiably. "No, I can't come in. It's at least four o'clock, and I have to be up at seven tomorrow. I'll drop in some time in the morning—you won't have a chance to miss me."

He said good-night to them all, and went down from the porch. They could hear him whistling "With Strephon for Your Foe" joyously down the path, and, more dimly, down the road that led to his house.

"There goes, I should say, a fairly happy man," remarked Allan to the world at large. "Now, Joy, if any one asked you, what would you say made him so contented with life?"

Joy liked Allan's brotherly teasing as a rule, but tonight it seemed as if she could not answer him, or anybody. She did, not feel as if she could talk any more, and looked appealingly at Phyllis.

"She's dead to the world, Allan," Phyllis interposed. "And if we stay down here talking those imps of ours are going to wake up and demand tribute."

"Great Scott, they are!" said Allan, "and the buns and stuff you held Mrs. Hewitt up for are in the bottom of the car, locked up in the garage—where you wanted to be."

"Which is providential," said the children's mother thankfully. "It's an alibi. They can't get any till tomorrow, no matter how much we want to give them any."

So they tiptoed up the stairs. Joy turned off into her own room, but she heard enough to know that no soft-footedness had availed. She heard Philip's clear, deliberate little voice demanding, "How much party did you bring me home, Mother?" and the hopeful patter of Angela's feet.

She shut her door tight before she knew how it turned out. She had a good deal to do, because she was going to have to take a train that got her away from Wallraven before John found time from his rounds to come back next morning. Gail might have told Mrs. Hewitt—any number of people—by this time. She did not want to see any of them again. And she loved them all very much.

She took off her frock with slow, careful fingers, and put on a kimono to pack in. Her trunk was against the wall. As she worked steadily over the tissue-paper and hangers and things to be folded, she thought she was beyond feeling anything at all, till she felt something wet on her face, and found that she was crying silently, without having known it in the least.

The green and silver frock—the white top-coat—that had burrs on it, where she had gotten out by the roadside to pick some goldenrod, and John had not gotten them all quite off—the little blue dress with the fichu that John had said made her look as if she belonged in a house instead of a story-book—the gray silk she had loved so, and worn so hard it was middle-age-looking already—the brown wool jersey suit she must travel in——

She laid this last across a chair, and tried to go on packing. That was the frock she had worn when John came to her in the woods, and was so kind, and so good, and told her he would let her have her happy month.... Well, she'd had it. And it was worth it—it was worth anything!

But she put her head down on the side of the trunk and sobbed and sobbed.

Presently she went on with her packing, and finished it by a little after four-thirty. The suitcase had to be filled. When it was done she took a bath and dressed, and lay down on the bed as she was. There was a train at nine-ten, that got her back home late in the afternoon, and she was taking no chances.

She slept a little, always with the nine-ten train on her mind, and finally rose and locked her trunk at half-past seven. She put the key and her ticket and what money she had in her hand-bag, fastened on her cap, took her suitcase, and stole downstairs. Nobody was astir yet but Lily-Anna, and Viola, who was giving the early-waking Angela her breakfast in an informal way in the corner of the kitchen.

"Could I have a cup of coffee in a little while now, Lily-Anna?" she asked the cook, who was making beaten biscuit in an echoing fashion that would have penetrated any but the thick hundred-year-old walls of the kitchen.

"Why, Miss Joy—you goin' off on a ride with Dr. Johnny this early?" inquired Lily-Anna, thinking the natural thing. "Course you can. I'll make it right now. An' I'll tell Mis' Harrington."

Joy had forgotten Phyllis in her wild desire for flight. But she remembered now. She would have to call Phyllis and tell her. Indeed, she would rather tell her herself than have Gail know. She couldn't go off this way, as if she was taking the silver with her.

She retraced her steps up the stairs, opened the door of Phyllis' room softly. Phyllis' bed was near the door, and she sat up at the slight noise. Joy beckoned to her, and she slipped out of bed, flinging around her a blue kimono that lay across the footboard and setting her feet noiselessly in slippers as she came out with the swift, gliding step that was characteristic of her. She gathered back the loose masses of her amber-colored hair and flung them over her shoulder, shut the door softly in order not to disturb Allan, and followed Joy down the hall.

"What is it, dear?" she asked. "Telephone at this unchristian hour?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you," Joy answered, "but I had to. Where can we go where I can talk to you for half an hour—or maybe ten minutes?"

There was a glowing fire in the living-room, and, of old custom, a long couch stood before it. Phyllis led the way downstairs to this, and established Joy on it, drawing a chair up to it herself.

"Now tell me all about it," she said comfortingly. "And lie down, child—you look dead."

But Joy was too nervous to lie down.

"I have to go away on the nine-ten," she said.... "No, please, Phyllis, wait till I tell you, and you'll see I do. You would, too."

Phyllis always took the least nerve-wearing way—you could count on her for that. She listened encouragingly.

"Gail said last night she—she knew my dark secret." Joy began nervously in the middle. "And you know Gail does tell anything about anybody she wants to, especially if she thinks it makes a funny story,—sometimes I think perhaps she likes making people ridiculous.... She doesn't care about feelings...."

"Why, you poor child, have you a dark secret?" asked Phyllis, smiling. "Let me hear the worst. I promise to love you still."

"Oh please do!" implored Joy. She dropped her head on the couch cushions and talked with her face hidden on one arm. "Phyllis, I—I never was engaged to John!"

The bombshell did not at all have the effect she had expected.

"I'm sorry to contradict you, but you certainly are," said Phyllis placidly.

"You don't understand," went on Joy, coming out from her shelter. "Listen."

So she told Phyllis, with both her quivering little hands locked in one of Phyllis' strong, firm ones, the whole story—the story of the shut up, youthless life among the people who came to give her grandfather homage, and regarded her as a plaything or a stage-property, and of how she had seen the two young lovers one wet day, and been stirred into a wild rebellion for a youth of her own.

"I understand," said Phyllis here. "You were 'half-sick of shadows.' I went through that myself. There comes a time when you'd do anything."

"You understand?" asked Joy with wide eyes, "you with a husband that adores the ground you walk on?"

"I do understand," affirmed Phyllis, with her mind flying back for a moment to a gray February day in a Philadelphia library—a day that was eight years old now. "I think I can understand anything you are going to tell me."

But Joy went on to the day when she had hidden on the stairs to get away from the people, and John had come in, with the light glinting on his hair, and catching in the ring on his finger.

"I suppose I fell in love with him then, though I didn't know what it was," Joy confessed. "And when I met you and Philip and Allan I loved you all so, too, and it seemed so queer you liked me—just me, you know, not somebody's granddaughter that he used for trimmings!"

"Who wouldn't?" said Phyllis matter-of-factly. "So far as I can see, most people are crazy over you."

"And Grandfather wouldn't let me go unless I'd been engaged—or he said that was the only reason—he thought I couldn't be, of course. And—and it flew out. And I used John's name when he cornered me, because I remembered him, and how kind he'd been. And on top of that——"

"And on top of that John turned up! Good gracious!" said Phyllis. She could not help a little laugh but her face sobered swiftly. "Think of that man's cleverness and self-control! Why—why, Joy, no man would do all that unless he cared for you a little, anyhow."

"John would," said Joy with conviction. "You know how he is about honor and courtesy and doing things for people."

Phyllis nodded. That was an incontrovertible fact.

"And he's told Gail," Joy went on. "That's the only secret I ever had in my life, so it must be that. So I'm going to run away. I simply can't stay and..."

"Told Gail! Ridiculous!" cried Phyllis. "Unless ... unless——"

"Unless there was some understanding between them before and John was simply overchivalrous when he helped me," Joy finished steadily. "Yes, that's the only answer.... I'm going. Please don't forget me."

"You foolish child!"

"There's another reason," Joy added. "Clarence proposed last night. I'd be almost sure to say 'yes' to save my face about the other thing, if I stayed, and I might have to marry him if I did.... Queer that Clarence, that I and everybody knew was just a plain flirt, should really want to, and John not!" she added absently. "Good-by."

She was off the couch and had hurried out of doors, where Phyllis, half-clad as she was, could not follow her.

Phyllis rose and went to the door, but the little slim brown figure was already going swiftly toward the station, her suitcase swinging in her hand.

It occurred to Phyllis as she walked over to the telephone that usually crises found her clad in a blue negligee of some sort. Then she got Dr. Hewitt's number.

"Is that you, John Hewitt?" she called. "Come over to this house this moment! ... Yes, something serious has happened. And don't ask for Allan—ask for me. I'll be on the porch waiting for you if I can. If not, stay there and wait for me. This is private—and—yes, about Joy! Come!"

Joy got the train with a desolately long interval of waiting at the station. It was a day-coach. She had all the time in the world to think things out. Her grandparents were back in the city house, she knew. They would be glad to see her in their different ways, she knew that, too. She could drop into her niche noiselessly, with scarcely a question from Grandfather, and all the lovingness in the world from Grandmother, except if Grandfather needed attention. The old gowns were still in her closet.... When she got home it would be reception day!

As this recollection forced itself on her she felt her heart sink lower than it had been before. All the tormenting memories in the world—and Grandfather would make her dress and be there....

She clasped her hands involuntarily, and felt on the left one the pressure of the wishing ring. She had meant to take it off and leave it with Phyllis, and she had forgotten to.

"There isn't much left to wish," she thought. She clasped her hands tighter over it. "Nothing much—but to get to sleep for a little while, and dream it isn't so. I—I suppose I can do that without a wish."

She tried very hard, and she had only had about three hours of sleep that night, not to speak of a most exciting evening before it. She really thought in her heart that she couldn't sleep, but she laid her head back against the hot red velvet of the seat, and actually did sleep dangerously near the time to change cars. She got a chair-car after that, but, having got into the way of it, drowsed again. She woke up from a dream that John was coming down the aisle, only Gail was somewhere outside with a rope around his arms, and was going to pull him back in a minute, to find that she was at the journey's end. She had only her suitcase to gather up. She had not even asked Phyllis to send her trunk. Well, Phyllis would, anyway.

The old house was just the same. She thought irrepressibly, as she came slowly up the steps, about the little boy who ran away from home, and when he came back after four hours, fidgeted a while, and then said off-handedly, "Well, I see you have the same old cat!" She knew exactly how that small boy had felt.

"The same old cats!" she said half-aloud as three plump, velvet-upholstered ladies ambled down the steps, and passed her without knowing her. Then she checked her mind in its careering. "I mustn't get Gailish, even if I am unhappy," she reminded herself. "That's the sort of thing she'd say."

Old Elizabeth was in the hall, in attendance, as usual. Joy flung her arms round her impulsively and kissed her. It was good to see her again, and to know that she didn't know any terrible things about her having commandeered a lover that really belonged to somebody else.

"Oh, Miss Joy, Miss Joy dear!" said old Elizabeth. "How good you got here in time for the reception! And it's good to see you, too. Run up and git into some pretty clothes like your grandpa likes, and go right into the parlor."

Joy smiled a little as she obeyed old Elizabeth. It seemed queer, and yet natural, to come back and slip into her old place as a minor figure in the old unbreakable routine. She had been a real person with a major part to play, all these weeks at Wallraven.... But it was rather a comfort, now, to feel that it didn't matter to anybody what you did, as long as Grandfather was pleased. And she felt as if she was willing to be a whole row of parlor bric-a-brac, she was so meek and so tired and unhappy.

It was the amber satin she had rebelled so against that she took out of her suitcase deliberately and put on. It was tight across the chest, and actually a little short for her—she had grown, really grown in the active open-air weeks she had been away. She was tanned, too, she found when the yellow dress was on, and there was a freckle on the back of one little white hand. She braided her hair in the old way and went down to the long parlors, back to the autographed pictures and framed letters, and Grandfather, benignantly great at the end of the room.

Grandmother was very glad to see her. They snatched a minute in a dark corner before they had to go on seeing guests. Joy found herself going up and down the room saying courteous things to people in just the old way. They were not surprised to see her. Perhaps they had scarcely noticed that she had been away.

"It's the same old cat—I've only been away three hours," she reminded herself with a little rueful smile. Then she saw a shy-looking couple over in the corner, and went over, to try to put them at ease.... She wouldn't have thought about people being shy or needing putting at ease before she went away!...

"Something has happened to me," thought Joy. Then she thought what it was. Why, she was doing the way John would have done—thinking about other people's feelings, not her own, for one minute. It felt warm in her heart. She had that for a keepsake from John, anyway.

But she found she was making a mistake to think about John. After a half-hour of moving about the long parlors she fled. The little dark place in the back hall was just the same. Six weeks, naturally, had not altered it.

She sat down on the bottom step in a little heap, with her face in her hands, under Aunt Lucilla's triumphant picture. She remembered it above her, but she did not want to look at it.

"I wish you hadn't egged me on, Aunt Lucilla," she said most unfairly from between her hands.

She did not know how long she had sat there, when she heard a little squeak, and looked up with her heart jumping. It sounded like the squeak doors make that haven't been opened for—say—six weeks or two months....

There in the ray of light from the chandelier in the room behind, the light glinting on his fair curly hair, he stood as he had stood before, the wishing-ring man.

For a moment Joy thought she was seeing something that wasn't so. Then she looked down. The ring was on her finger still, not on his. And he was not a vision. He was a human man, a man she knew and loved. And he did not smile at her this time, as the vision would have done, in a quizzical, stranger-friendly fashion, and stand still. He was over at her side in one swift step, and he had both her hands tight, as if they belonged to him, and he was talking to her in a loving, scolding voice, as people only talk to you when you belong to them and they to you.

"Joy! You very naughty little girl, to run away this way!"

For a minute she only wanted to cling to his hands and tell him how glad—how glad she was to see him, and how nothing else in the whole beautiful world mattered at all. But she remembered she mustn't.

"You told Gail. You might have known she'd shame me before everybody if she could. She doesn't care.... Oh, John, how could you?"

She held on to him hard for comfort even while she was reproaching him.