Gordon smiled over the letter.  “Poor Mary,” he told Constance; “she has carried Barry for so long on her shoulders, and she can’t realize that he is at last learning to stand alone.”

But Constance did not smile.  “We never could bear Jerry Tuckerman; he always made Barry do things.”

“Nobody can make me do things when I don’t want to do them,” said Gordon comfortably and priggishly, “and Barry must learn that he can’t put the blame on anybody’s shoulders but his own.”

Constance sighed.  She did not quite share Gordon’s sense of security.  Barry was different.  He was a dear, and trying so hard; but Jerry had always had some power to sway him from his best, a sinister inexplicable influence.

Jerry, arriving, hung around Barry for several days, tempting him, like the villain in the play.

But Barry refused to be tempted.  He was busy—­and he had just had a letter from Leila.

“I simply can’t run around town with you, Tuckerman,” he explained.  “Holding down a job in an office like this isn’t like holding down a government job.”

“So they’ve put your nose to the grindstone?” Jerry grinned as he said it, and Barry flushed.  “I like it, Tuckerman; there’s something ahead, and Gordon has me slated for a promotion.”

But what did a promotion mean to Jerry’s millions?  And Barry was good company, and anyhow—­oh, he couldn’t see Ballard doing a steady stunt like this.

“Motor into Scotland with me next week,” he insisted; “get a week off, and I’ll pick up a gay party.  It’s a bit early, but we’ll stop in the big towns.”

Barry shook his head.

“Leila and the General are coming over in May—­she wants to take that trip—­and, anyhow, I can’t get away.”

“Oh, well, wait and take your nice little ride with Leila,” Jerry said, good-naturedly enough, “but don’t tie yourself too soon to a woman’s apron string, Ballard—­wait till you’ve had your fling.”

But Barry didn’t want a fling.  He, too, was dreaming.  On half-holidays and Sundays he haunted neighborhoods where there were rooms to let.  And when one day he chanced on a sunshiny suite where a pot of primroses bloomed in the window, he lingered and looked.

“If they’re empty a month from now I’ll take them,” he said.

“A guinea down and I’ll keep them for you,” was the smiling response of the pleasant landlady.

So Barry blushingly paid the guinea, and began to buy little things to make the rooms beautiful—­a bamboo basket for flowers—­a Sheffield tray—­a quaint tea-caddy—­an antique footstool for Leila’s little feet.

Yet there were moments in the midst of his elation when some chill breath of fear touched him, and it was in one of these moods that he wrote out of his heart to his little bride.