“Don’t be sorry,” he said, softly.  “You haven’t been naughty.”

But she had swung round to some comprehension of what he had a right to feel.

“It makes one selfish,” she said, “to want—­to want things to come out right.”

“I know.  Well, can’t we make them come out right?  He is sure of the consulship?”

“Practically.”

“You want to be assured of his taking it.”

She did not answer; but her face lighted, as if to a new appeal.  Jerome followed her look along the path.  Marshby himself was coming.  He was no weakling.  He swung along easily with the stride of a man accustomed to using his body well.  He had not, perhaps, the urban air, and yet there was nothing about him which would not have responded at once to a more exacting civilization.  Jerome knew his face,—­knew it from their college days together and through these annual visits of his own; but now, as Marshby approached, the artist rated him not so much by the friendly as the professional eye.  He saw a man who looked the scholar and the gentleman, keen though not imperious of glance.  His visage, mature even for its years, had suffered more from emotion than from deeds or the assaults of fortune.  Marshby had lived the life of thought, and, exaggerating action, had failed to fit himself to any form of it.  Wilmer glanced at his hands, too, as they swung with his walk, and then remembered that the professional eye had already noted them and laid their lines away for some suggestive use.  As he looked, Marshby stopped in his approach, caught by the singularity of a gnarled tree limb.  It awoke in him a cognizance of nature’s processes, and his face lighted with the pleasure of it.

“So you won’t marry me?” asked Wilmer, softly, in that pause.

“Don’t!” said Mary.

“Why not, when you won’t tell whether you’re engaged to him or not?  Why not, anyway?  If I were sure you’d be happier with me, I’d snatch you out of his very maw.  Yes, I would.  Are you sure you like him, Mary?”

The girl did not answer, for Marshby had started again.  Jerome got the look in her face, and smiled a little, sadly.

“Yes,” he said, “you’re sure.”

Mary immediately felt unable to encounter them together.  She gave Marshby a good-morning, and, to his bewilderment, made some excuse about her weeding and flitted past him on the path.  His eyes followed her, and when they came back to Wilmer the artist nodded brightly.

“I’ve just asked her,” he said.

“Asked her?” Marshby was about to pass him, pulling out his glasses and at the same time peering at the picture with the impatience of his near-sighted look.

“There, don’t you do that!” cried Jerome, stopping, with his brush in air.  “Don’t you come round and stare over my shoulder.  It makes me nervous ad the devil.  Step back there—­there by that mullein.  So!  I’ve got to face my protagonist.  Yes, I’ve been asking her to marry me.”