“Yes.”

“Oh, I feel that way.  But what if the girl believes in him?  Doesn’t dream that he is weak—­trusts him absolutely, blindly?  Should any one try to open her eyes?”

“Sometimes it is folly to be wise.  Perhaps for her he will always be strong.”

“Then what’s the answer?”

“Only this.  That the man himself should make the test.  He should wait until he knows that he is worthy of her.”

She made a little gesture of hopelessness, just the lifting of her hands and letting them drop; then she spoke with a rush of feeling.

“Mr. Poole—­it is Barry and Leila.  Ought I to let them marry?”

He smiled at her confidence in her ability to rule the destinies of those about her.

“I fancy that you won’t have anything to do with it.  He is of age, and you are only his sister.  You couldn’t forbid the banns, you know.”

“But if I could convince him——­”

“Of what?” gravely.  “That you think him a boy?  Perhaps that would tend to weaken his powers.”

“Then I must fold my hands?”

“Yes.  As things are now—­I should wait.”

He did not explain, and she did not ask, for what she should wait.  It was as if they both realized that the test would come, and that it would come in time.

And it did come.

It was while Leila was on a trip to the Maine coast with her father.

July was waning, and already an August sultriness was in the air.  Those who were left in town were the workers—­every one who could get away was gone.  Mary, with the care of her house on her hands, refused Aunt Frances’ invitation for a month by the sea, and Aunt Isabelle declined to leave her.

“I like it better here, even with the heat,” she told her niece, “than running around Bar Harbor with Frances and Grace.”

Barry wrote voluminous letters to Leila, and received in return her dear childish scrawls.  But the strain of her absence began to tell on him.  He began to feel the pull toward old pleasures and distractions.  Then one day Jerry Tuckerman arrived on the scene.  The next night, he and Barry and the other radiant musketeers motored over to Baltimore by moonlight.  Barry did not come home the next day, nor the next, nor the next.  Mary grew white and tense, and manufactured excuses which did not deceive Aunt Isabelle.  Neither of the tired pale women spoke to each other of their vigils.  Neither of them spoke of the anxiety which consumed them.

Then one night, after a message had come from the office, asking for an explanation of Barry’s absence; after she had called up the Country Club; after she had called up Jerry Tuckerman and had received an evasive answer; after she had exhausted all other resources, Mary climbed the steps to the Tower Rooms.

And there, sitting stiff and straight in a high-backed chair, with her throat dry, her pulses throbbing, she laid the case before Roger Poole.