Margaret rose.  “If you say a word to Grant I’ll never speak to you again.  And I assure you I shouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth.”

“If you only knew men better!” exclaimed Craig earnestly.  His eyes fascinated her, and his sharp, penetrating voice somehow seemed to reach to her very soul and seize it and hold it enthralled.  “My dear child, Grant Arkwright is one man in a million.  I’ve been with him in times that show men’s qualities.  Don’t judge men by what they are ordinarily.  They don’t reveal their real selves.  Wait till a crisis comes—­then you see manhood or lack of it.  Life is bearable, at the worst, for any of us in the routine.  But when the crisis comes we need, not only all our own strength, but all we can rally to our support.  I tell you, Miss Severence, Grant is one of the men that can be relied on.  I despise his surface—­as I do yours.  But it’s because I see the man—­the manhood—­beneath that surface, that I love him.  And I want him to have a woman worthy of him.  That means you.  You, too, have the soul that makes a human being—­a real aristocrat—­of the aristocracy, of strong and honest hearts.”

Craig’s face was splendid, was ethereal in its beauty, yet flashing with manliness.  He looked as she had seen him that night two years before, when he had held even her and her worldly friends spellbound, had made them thrill with ideas of nobility and human helpfulness foreign to their everyday selves.  She sat silent when he had finished, presently drew a long breath.

“Why aren’t you always like that?” she exclaimed half to herself.

“You’ll marry Grant?”

She shook her head positively.  “Impossible.”

“Why not?”

“Impossible,” she repeated.  “And you mustn’t speak of it to me—­or to him.  I appreciate your motive.  I thank you—­really, I do.  It makes me feel better, somehow, to have had any one think so well of me as you do.  And Grant ought to be proud of your friendship.”

Their eyes met.  She flushed to the line of her hair and her glance fell, for she felt utterly ashamed of herself for the design upon him which she had been harboring.  “Let us go in and join the others,” said she confusedly.  And her color fled, returned in a flood.

“No, I’m off,” replied he, in his ordinary, sharp, bustling way.  “I’m not defeated.  I’ve done well—­very well, for a beginning.”  And he gave her hand his usual firm, uncomfortable clasp, and rushed away.

She walked up and down full fifteen minutes before she went toward the house.  At the veranda Lucia intercepted her.  “Did he?” she asked anxiously.

Margaret looked at her vaguely, then smiled.  “No, he did not.”

“He didn’t?” exclaimed Lucia, at once disappointed and relieved.

“Not yet,” said Margaret.  She laughed, patted Lucia’s full-blown cheek.  “Not quite yet.”  And she went on in to tea, humming to herself gayly; she did not understand her own sudden exceeding high spirits.