But his counterplea when it came was of a disconcerting briefness and potency.  He said very slowly, “Yes, I see it all.  There is your spiritual husband; there are they” (indicating the valley with a sweep of a big hand), “and there are you, Emma, caught in a web of baffling and false ideas; and here am I, a real man who loves you, fearing neither the St. Michael nor them” (another gesture) “nor your doubts.  I set myself, Morton Crocker, your lover, against them all and take my own so.”

There was a frightened second in which his sturdy arms closed about her.  There was a little shudder, as the same big hand that had defied the valley sought her head and pressed it to his shoulder.  When Emma at last looked up the mockery she always carried in her eyes had given place to a new serenity, and her hand reached up timidly for his.

Crocker and Emma—­we now instinctively gave him the precedence—­were inconsiderate enough to remove themselves without making clear the fate of the no longer missing St. Michael.  We still speculated indolently as to the nature of the afterpiece in which we assumed this ex-hero of our comedy might yet appear.  Then we learned that Emma was to be married without delay from the stone manor house under the Taconics where her people had dwelt since patroon days.  Only a handful of friends with Crocker’s nearest kin and her inevitable New York aunts were to be present.  These venerable ladies had admitted that in marrying, even opulently, out of the family, Emma had once more shown velleities of self-sacrifice.  Then we heard of Crocker and Emma on his boat along the coast “Down East.”  Later we were shocked by rumours of a canoe trip through Canadian waterways.  Hereupon the usually benevolent Dennis protested as he glanced approvingly at the well-kept Tuscan landscape.  “Crocker needn’t rub it in,” he opined.  “Why, it’s the same scrubby spruce tree from the Plains of Abraham to James’s Bay-and Emma, who hated being bored!  Why, it’s marriage by capture; it’s barbaric.”  “It’s worse; it’s rheumatic,” shuddered Harwood as he declined Marsala and took whisky.  “But he’ll have to bring her back to civilisation some time, if only to hospital.  We shall have her again.”  “He will bring her back, but we shall never have her again,” said Dennis solemnly.  “She has renounced us and all our works.”  “Renouncing our works isn’t so difficult,” smiled Mrs. Dennis, and then the talk drifted elsewhere, to new Emmas who were just beginning to eat the Tuscan lotus.

Before the year had turned to June again we had nearly forgotten our runaways, when a quite unusual activity about her villa and Crocker’s warned us that they were coming back.  Harwood had seen in transit a box which he thought corresponded to the St. Michael’s stature, but was not sure.  In a few days came a circular note from Crocker through Dennis saying that they were fairly settled and he glad to see any or all of us.  She, however, was still fatigued by the journey and must for a time keep her room.