Isabel remained at home a week.

During her first meeting with Rowan, she effaced all evidences that there had ever been a love affair between them.  They resumed their social relations temporarily and for a definite purpose—­this was what she made him understand at the outset and to the end.  All that she said to him, all that she did, had no further significance than her general interest in his welfare and her determination to silence the scandal for which she herself was in a way innocently responsible.  Their old life without reference to it was assumed to be ended; and she put all her interest into what she assumed to be his new life; this she spoke of as a certainty, keeping herself out of it as related to it in any way.  She forced him to talk about his work, his plans, his ambitions; made him feel always not only that she did not wish to see him suffer, but that she expected to see him succeed.

They were seen walking together and driving together.  He demurred, but she insisted.  “I will not accept such a sacrifice,” he said, but she overruled him by her reply:  “It is not a sacrifice; it is a vindication of myself, that you cannot oppose.”  But he knew that there was more in it than what she called vindication of herself; there was the fighting friendship of a comrade.

During these days, Isabel met cold faces.  She found herself a fresh target for criticism, a further source of misunderstanding.  And there was fresh suffering, too, which no one could have foreseen.  Late one twilight when she and Rowan were driving, they passed Marguerite driving also, she being still a guest at the Merediths’, and getting well.  Each carriage was driving slowly, and the road was not wide, and the wheels almost locked, and there was time enough for everything to be seen.  And the next day, Marguerite went home from the Merediths’ and passed into a second long illness.

The day came for Isabel to leave—­she was going away to remain a long time, a year, two years.  They had had their last drive and twilight was falling when they returned to the Hardages’.  She was standing on the steps as she gave him both her hands.

“Good-by,” she said, in the voice of one who had finished her work.  “I hardly know what to say—­I have said everything.  Perhaps I ought to tell you my last feeling is, that you will make life a success, that nothing will pull you down.  I suppose that the life of each of us, if it is worth while, is not made up of one great effort and of one failure or of one success, but of many efforts, many failures, partial successes.  But I am afraid we all try at first to realize our dreams.  Good-by!”

“Marry me,” he said, tightening his grasp on her hands and speaking as though he had the right.

She stepped quickly back from him.  She felt a shock, a delicate wound, and she said with a proud tear:  “I did not think you would so misjudge me in all that I have been trying to do.”