Maggie Cameron, at this period of her life, was not deeply introspective.  She did not realize what, according to other standards, this thing was which she was doing.  She was merely functioning as she had been taught to function.  And if any change was beginning in her, she was thus far wholly unconscious of it.

CHAPTER XX

Larry’s new problem was the most difficult and delicate dilemma of his life—­this divided loyalty:  to balk Maggie and the two men behind her without revealing the truth about Maggie to Dick, to protect Dick without betraying Maggie.  It certainly was a trying, baffling situation.

He had no such foolish idea that he could change Maggie by exposing her.  At best he would merely render her incapable of continuing this particular course; he would increase her bitterness and hostility to him.  Anyhow, according to the remnants of his old code, that wouldn’t be playing fair—­particularly after her aiding his escape when he had been trapped.

Upon only one point was he clear, and on this he became more settled with every hour:  whatever he did he must do with the idea of a fundamental awakening in Maggie.  Merely to foil her in this one scheme would be to solve the lesser part of his problem; Maggie would be left unchanged, or if changed at all the change would be toward a greater hardness, and his major problem would be made more difficult of solution.

He considered many ways.  He thought of seeing Maggie again, and once more appealing to her.  That he vetoed, not because of the danger to himself, but because he knew Maggie would not see him; and if he again did break in upon her unexpectedly, in her obstinate pride she would heed nothing he said.  He thought of seeing Barney and Old Jimmie and somehow so throwing the fear of God into that pair that they would withdraw Maggie from the present enterprise; but even if he succeeded in so hazardous an undertaking, again Maggie would be left unchanged.  He thought of showing Miss Sherwood the hidden portrait of Maggie, of telling her all and asking her aid; but this he also vetoed, for it seemed a betrayal of Maggie.

He kept going back to one plan:  not a plan exactly, but the idea upon which the right plan might be based.  If only he could adroitly, with his hand remaining unseen, place Maggie in a situation where circumstances would appeal conqueringly to her best self, to her latent sense of honor—­that was the idea!  But cudgel his brain as he would, Larry could not just then develop a working plan whose foundation was that idea.

But even if Larry had had a brilliant plan it would hardly have been possible for him to have devoted himself to its execution, for two days after his visit to Maggie at the Grantham, the Sherwoods moved out to their summer place some forty miles from the city on the North Shore of Long Island; and Larry was so occupied with routine duties pertaining to this migration that at the moment he had time for little else.  Cedar Crest was individual yet typical of the better class of Long Island summer residences.  It was a long white building of many piazzas and many wings, set on a bluff looking over the Sound, with a broad stretch of silken lawn, and about it gardens in their June glory, and behind the house a couple of hundred acres of scrub pine.