The two girls laughed.  “How did you get that idea of me, Susan?” Mary asked.

“By studyin’ you,” said Susan.  “I ain’t known you all your life for nothin’.

“Now Miss Constance,” she went on, as she opened the oven and peeped in, “Miss Constance is just the other way.  ’Most any nice man was bound to git her.  An’ it was lucky that Mr. Gordon was the first.”

“And what about me?” was Grace’s demand.

“Go ’way,” said Susan, “you knows yo’se’f, Miss Grace.  You bats your eyes at everybody, and gives your heart to nobody.”

“And so Mary and I are to be old maids—­oh, Susan.”

“They don’t call them old maids any more,” Susan said, “and they ain’t old maids, not in the way they once was.  An old maid is a woman who ain’t got any intrus’ in life but the man she can’t have, and you all is the kin’ that ain’t got no intrus’ in the men that want you.”

They left her, laughing, and when they reached the dining-room they sat down on the window-seat; where Mary had gazed out upon the dead garden and the bronze boy.

“And now,” said Grace, “tell me about Roger Poole.”

“There isn’t much to tell.  He’s given up his position in the Treasury, and he’s gone down to his cousin’s home for a while.  He’s going to try to write for the magazines; he thinks that stories of that section will take.”

“He’s in love with you, Mary.  But you’re not in love with him—­and you mustn’t be.”

“Of course not.  I’m not going to marry, Grace.”

Grace gave her a little squeeze.  “You don’t know what you are going to do, darling; no woman does.  But I don’t want you to fall in love with anybody yet.  Flit through life with me for a time.  I’ll take you to Paris next summer, and show you my world.”

“I couldn’t, unless I could pay my own way.”

“Oh, Mary, what makes you fight against anybody doing anything for you?”

“Porter says it is my contrariness—–­but I just can’t hold out my hands and let things drop into them.”

“I know—­and that’s why you won’t marry Porter Bigelow.”

Mary flashed at her a surprised and grateful glance.  “Grace,” she said, solemnly, “you’re the first person who has seemed to understand.”

“And I understand,” said Grace, “because to me life is a Great Adventure.  Everything that happens is a hazard on the highway—­as yet I haven’t found a man who will travel the road with me; they all want to open a gate and shut me in and say, ‘Stay here.’”

Mary’s eyes were shining.  “I feel that, too.”

Grace kissed her.  “You’d laugh, Mary, if I told the dream which is at the end of my journey.”

“I sha’n’t laugh—­tell me.”

There was a rich color in Grace’s cheeks.  In her modish frock of the black which she affected, and which was this morning of fine serge set on by a line of fur at hem and wrist, and topped by a little hat of black velvet which framed the vividness of her glorious hair, she looked the woman of the world, so that her words gained strength by force of contrast.