“Well, I don’t think I care very much to-night, if I never get anything ever again in all my life to come.”

“Poor little tired girl!”

Claire’s chin went up with a jerk.  “I don’t need your pity, I won’t have it.  I am a stranger to you and to your friends.  I am—­” The defiant chin began to quiver.

“If you were not so tired,” Francis Ronald said gravely, “I’d have this thing out with you, here and now.  I’d make you tell me why you so wilfully misunderstand.  Why you seem to take pleasure in saying things that are meant to hurt me, and must hurt you.  As it is—­”

Claire turned on him impetuously.  “I don’t ask you to make allowances for me.  If I do what displeases you, I give you perfect liberty to find fault.  I’m not too tired to listen.  But as to your making me do or say anything I don’t choose, why—­”

He shook his head.  “I’m afraid you are a hopeless proposition, at least for the present.  Perhaps, some time I may be able to make you understand—­Forgive me!  I should say, perhaps, some time you may be willing to understand.”

Their chauffeur drew up beside the curbstone in front of Martha’s door, then sprang down from his seat to prove to his lordly-looking “fare” that he knew his business, and was deserving of as large a tip as a correct estimate of his merit might suggest.

Francis Ronald took Claire’s key from her, fitted it into the lock of the outer door, and opened it for her.

“And you will stand by Radcliffe?  You won’t desert him?” he asked, as she was about to pass into the house.

“I’ll show you that, at least, I’m not a quitter, even if I am a hopeless proposition, as you say.”

A faint shadow of a smile flitted across his face as, with head held proudly erect, she turned and left him.

“No, you’re not a quitter,” he muttered to himself, “but—­neither am I!”

The determined set of his jaw would have rekindled that inner rebellious fire in Claire, if she had seen it.  But she was seeing nothing just at that moment, save Martha, who, to her amazement, stood ready to receive her in the inner hall.

“Ain’t it just grand?” inquired Mrs. Slawson.  “They told me yesterday, ‘all things bein’ equal,’ they’d maybe leave us back soon, but I didn’t put no stock in it, knowin’ they never is equal.  So I just held me tongue an’ waited, an’ this mornin’, like a bolster outer a blue sky, come the word that at noon we could go.  Believe me, I didn’t wait for no old shoes or rice to be threw after me.  I got into their old amberlance-carriage, as happy as a blushin’ bride bein’ led to the halter, an’ Francie an’ me come away reji’cin’.  Say, but what ails you? You look sorter—­sorter like a—­strained relation or somethin’.  What you been doin’ to yourself to get so white an’ holler-eyed?  What kep’ you so late?”

“I had a tussle with Radcliffe.”