More than once Mary felt her breath come faster, and when Aunt Cordelia invited him to stay to dinner and he chanced to look at her, she gave a barely perceptible signal “Yes,” and smiled to herself at the warmth of his acceptance.

“I’ll telephone mother,” he said, briskly rising.  “Where’s the phone, Mary?  I forget the way.”

She arose to show him.

“Let’s waltz out,” he laughed.  “Play something, Helen.  Something lively and happy....”

It was a long time before Mary went to sleep that night.  The moon was nearly full and shone in her windows, a stream of its rays falling on her bed and bringing to her those immortal waves of fancy which begin where the scent of flowers stop, and end where immortal and melancholy music begins.  Unbidden tears came to her eyes, though she couldn’t have told you why, and again a sense of the fleeting of time disturbed her.

“Aunt Mary ...”  In a few years she would be old, and her hair would be white like Aunt Patty’s....  And in a few years more....

But even as Wally Cabot kept her from thinking too much of Archey Forbes, so now Archey unconsciously revenged himself and kept her thoughts from centring too closely around Wally Cabot.

Archey called the next afternoon and Mary sat on the veranda steps with him, while Helen made hay with Wally on a tete-a-tete above.

The few women who were left in the factory were having things made unpleasant for them:  that was what Archey had come to tell her.  Their canteen had been stopped; the day nursery discontinued; the nurses discharged.

“Of course they are not needed there any longer, so far as that is concerned,” concluded Archey, “but they certainly helped us out of a hole when we did need them, and it doesn’t seem right now to treat them rough.”

At hearing this, a guilty feeling passed over Mary and left her cheeks warm.  “They’ll think I’ve deserted them,” she thought.

“Well, haven’t you?” something inside her asked.

Some of her old dreams returned to her mind, as though to mock her.  She was going to be a new Moses once, leading her sisters out of the house of bondage.  Woman was to have things different.  Old drudgeries were to be lifted from her shoulders.  The night was over.  The dawn was at hand.

“Well, what can I do?” she thought uneasily.

“You can stop them from being treated roughly,” something inside her answered.

“I can certainly do that,” she nodded to herself.  “I’ll telephone Uncle Stanley right away.”

But Uncle Stanley was out, and Mary was going riding with Wally that afternoon.  So she wrote a hurried note and left it at the factory as they passed by.

“Dear Uncle Stanley,” it read,

“Please see that every courtesy and attention is shown, the women who are still working.  We may need them again some day.

“Sincerely,

“Mary.”