"My gracious!" cried Miss Whitcom loudly and cordially, "I've been in Arizona!"

"You have?"

"Rather! I started a cactus candy business there before you were...." She paused, then wholeheartedly laughed a defiance at the very notion of grey hairs. "No, I won't say it. I won't go back so far as that. For I do believe you're thirty, sir, if you're a day."

"I'm thirty-three," confessed Barry, looking older, for just a wistful moment, than his wont.

"Well, then, when you were a youngster, we'll say, Marjory Whitcom was working fourteen long hours a day in an absurd little factory on the fringe of the desert—slaving like all possessed to make a go of it. The idea was a good one."

"Yes," he agreed, "for we're turning out wonderful cactus candy now."

"I know it. The idea was corking. Alas, so many of my ideas have been corking! But every one at that time said it was absurd to think of making candy out of cactus, and no one would believe the Toltec legend which gave us our receipt. Ah, yes—there's many a slip...."

[Pg 143]

In her almost brazen way she cornered the new hero of Point Betsey—actually got between him and the others. But Miss Whitcom was shrewder, even, than she was brazen. You couldn't possibly deceive her when she had her reliable antennæ out. Had she not seen the landscape between them? Distinctly seen it? Suspecting the imminence of a rather taut situation, this was her way of clearing the air.

Louise did not altogether fathom her aunt's subtlety; but she was grateful, seizing the occasion to disappear. She flew up to her room, flung herself on the bed, and nervously cried a little.

Lynndal was here. The long anticipated event had actually come to pass. But it wasn't the kind of event she had conceived. What was the trouble? Was he not as she remembered him? Yes, but with phantoms to dictate the pattern, how she had idealized him in the interim, and how the correspondence had served to build up in her mind a being of romance and fire which flesh and blood could never hope to challenge! Well, he had come, this stranger—with his quiet kindliness, his somehow sensed aura of patience, where she looked for passion.

Ghosts of the past played havoc with her heart, and she thought: "Can I give myself to this man? Can I be his, all his? Can I be his for ever and ever? Can I belong henceforth to him and no one else?"

The mood was one of general relaxation, however—though a relaxation she had, at an early hour, been far enough from anticipating. She reviewed the[Pg 144] events of the day thus far. She had waked at flush of dawn; had risen full of a gay expectation, and had gone out to meet her lover. He had come; she had met him and had forestalled his kiss. Now he was here. Ten o'clock. And her heart was in a curious state of panic.

But Barry, meanwhile, still down on the screened porch, was finding his fiancée's relative an intelligent and really engaging person. For her part, it had not taken long—with the cactus candy as bait—to lure him into enthusiasm over his dry-farming. She knew, it developed, very nearly as much about dry-farming as he did, and Barry, of course, knew nearly as much about it as there was to know.

The Rev. and Mrs. Needham, having gone on into the cottage living room, expecting that Barry, momentarily arrested, would follow, stood a moment conferring in discreet tones.

"What do you think of him, Anna?"

"He seems like a real nice sort, Alf. What do you think?"

"I've always admired Barry," he said proudly, a bit complaisantly. "During several years of business connection...."

"Yes, Alf he's certainly looked after our interests out West."

Sly little wrinkles of worry just etched themselves across the Rev. Needham's florid brow. Those interests in the West—heaven knew how much they meant! They kept the wolf from the door—a mild[Pg 145] wolf, of course, and one that wouldn't really bite; but still a wolf. Yes, they sustained the Needham establishment in a kind of grand way—certainly in a way which wouldn't be possible on ministerial salary alone. And it was Lynndal Barry's initiative which had built the dam: the dam generated electricity and paid dividends. Yes, they certainly owed a great deal—though of course it was all on a sufficiently regular business basis—to Mr. Barry.

"He's a fine, fine man—one of God's own noblemen, Anna. It's only to be hoped...."

"Hoped, Alf?" Anna was seldom able to supply, off-hand, what one groped for in one's perplexity.

"That Louise," he began a little impatiently, "—that Louise...."

"Why, where is she?" asked Mrs. Needham, looking suddenly around.

Ah, where indeed?

The Rev. Needham experienced an uncomfortable shivery sensation in his stomach. Still, there was no reason other than what Marjory had said about their walking rather far apart. What did she mean? What did she ever mean? Ah, Marjory....

They looked at her. Yes, she had certainly captured Mr. Barry. Poor Marjory had a way....

"I wonder," sighed the Rev. Needham—a little ponderously to conceal an inner breathlessness. "I wonder...."

"What, Alf?"

He shook himself, looking dimly horrified. [Pg 146]"Nothing, Anna." What he wondered was whether his wife's sister had ever fallen by the wayside....

"Alf," whispered Anna, on the point of slipping upstairs to make sure for the last time that the visitor's room was quite ready, "how did you two get on?"

"I can't say very well," he answered with an inflection of nervous vagueness. "It was almost all about a Bishop on the train. Anna, I'm—I'm afraid it's no use. You know there are people in the world that seem destined never to understand each other...."

"Oh, Alf—she's so good-hearted!"

"That may be true," he replied, "but in Tahulamaji I'm beginning to be convinced she led—that she may almost have led...."

"Oh, Alf!"

"And she'd for............