She longed to ask him how he worked the pedals, and had to bite the question back.

He laughed, reading her mind.  “If you come,” he said, “I will try to make you forget what I am—­even what I look like.  I should like you to know what I might have been—­what I still might be.”  He went out abruptly and closed the door after him.

Barbara mused for a minute and then rang for Bubbles.  “I’m going out of town for over Sunday,” she said.  “What will you do?”

“Me and Harry,” said he, “is going down to the sea swimming.”

“Please give Harry my best wishes, Bubbles.”

The great eyes held hers for a minute and were turned away.  He was sharp enough to know that through one of his idols the other had been hurt.  And he found the knowledge sorrowful and heavy.

“I’ll do that,” he said solemnly.

That afternoon Wilmot Allen drove Barbara down to Meadowbrook.  He had borrowed a sixty-horse-power runabout for the occasion, but displayed no anxiety to put the machine through its higher paces.  “I’ve had a rough week,” he said, “and my nerves are shaky.  Do you mind if we take our time?”

“No,” said Barbara, “my nerves are shaky, too.  And I want to talk to you without having the words blown out of my mouth and scattered all over Long Island.”

He bowed over the steering-wheel, and said:  “It’s good to know that you want to talk to me.  Is it to be about you, about me—­or us?”

Barbara leaned luxuriously against the scientifically placed cushion, all her muscles relaxed.  “You,” she said, “are to play several parts, Wilmot.”

“And always one,” he answered softly.

“Not now,” she said, “please.  First you are to play priest, and listen to confession.  Then you are to confess, or I am to do it for you, and receive penance.”

“While I’m priest,” he said, “do I impose any penance on you?”

“I’ll listen to suggestions,” said she, “that point toward absolution.”

“I am now clothed In my priestly outfit,” said Wilmot; “you have entered the confessional.  I listen.”

Very simply, without preamble, she plunged into her affair with Harry West.  And Wilmot listened, his head bent forward over the steering-wheel.  It was not pleasant for him to learn that she had thought herself seriously in love with another man, and was not now in the least sure of her feelings toward him.

“I cried almost all night,” she said; “it didn’t seem as if I could bear it.”

“How about the next night, Barbs?”

“Oh, I slept,” she said, “or thought about work.”

“And he told you that you mustn’t see each other anymore?”

“Yes.”

“I think he was right, Barbs.  I don’t believe you really love him, dear.  If you did you would have cried for many nights and days—­felt like it, I mean, all the time.  Men attract you—­they drop out for some reason or other—­and so on.  I know pretty well.”