Truedale smiled.  “That’s a common-sense argument, anyway,” he said.  “But I suppose we men are afraid to trust any one else; we don’t want to—­lose you.”

“As if you could!” Betty held her small, white hand out to the dog lying at her feet.  “As if we didn’t know, that whatever we don’t want, we do want you.  Why, you are our—­job.”

Truedale threw his head back and laughed.  “You’re like a whiff of your big mountain air,” he said.

“I hope I always will be,” Betty replied softly and earnestly, “I must keep—­free, no matter what happens.  I must keep what I am, or how can I expect to keep—­Brace?  He loved this me.  Marriage doesn’t perform a miracle, does it—­Conning? please let me call you that.  Lynda has told me how she and you believe in two lives, not one narrow little life.  It’s splendid.  And now I am going to tell you another secret.  I’ll have to let Lynda in on this, too, she must help me.  I have a little money of my very own—­I earned every cent of it.  I am going to buy a tiny bit of ground, I’ve picked it out—­it’s across the river in the woods.  I’m going to build a house, not much of a one, a very small one, and I’m going to call it—­The Refuge.  When I cannot find myself, when I get lost, after I’m married, and am trying to be everything to Brace, I’m going to run away to—­The Refuge!” The blue eyes were shining “And nobody can come there, not even Brace, except by invitation.  I think”—­very softly—­“I think all women should have a—­a Refuge.”

Truedale found himself impressed.  “You’re a very wise little woman,” he said.

“One has to be, sometimes,” came the slow words.  And at that moment all doubt of Betty’s serious-mindedness departed.

Brace joined them presently.  He looked as if he had been straining at a leash since dinner time.

“Con,” he said, laying his hand on the light head bending over the dog, “now that you have talked and laughed with Betty, what have you got to say?”

“Congratulations, Ken, with all my heart.”

“And now, Betty”—­there was a new tone in Kendall’s voice—­“Mollie has said you may walk back with me.  The taxi would stifle us.  There’s a moon, dear, and a star or two—­”

“As if that mattered!” Betty broke in.  “I’m very, very happy.  Brace, you’ve got a nice, sensible family.  They agree with me in everything.”

The weeks passed rapidly.  Betty’s affairs absorbed them all, though she laughingly urged them to leave her alone.

“It’s quite awful enough to feel yourself being carried along by a deluge,” she jokingly said, “without hearing the cheers from the banks.”

But Mollie Morrell flung herself heart and soul into the arranging of the wardrobe—­playing big sister for the first and only time in her life.  She was older than Betty, but the younger girl had always swayed the elder.

And Lynda became fascinated with the little bungalow across the river, known as The Refuge.