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 glowed beautifully to Henry's delighted perception. "Then I was wild at them all. By morning I think I should have rushed down to tear your bars away myself, but that"

"Yes? Yes?" demanded Henry eagerly.

"But that little Miss Marceau came and told me you were breaking under the strain. That gave me hope—hope that you were going to turn and be sensible—be one of us again. Oh, wasn't I a fool? You standing like a rock, and me trying to make another—another—Scanlon out of you. But that's what I was, and so each day I said to my heart: 'O heart, be hard! Be hard for Henry's sake!' But finally I couldn't be hard any longer. I was dressed and ready to rush to you when father told me about that little teacher-woman being on the island with you. That's when I turned into a jealous cat, Henry! From that moment there wasn't a chance that I would come. Oh, Henry, wasn't it shameful?" Her face reddened, and unable to bear even his sympathetic glance, with its surprised light of growing comprehension, she turned from him entirely and dropped into a chair, yet not weakly—dropped into it to sit bolt upright, staring out the window, breathing fast, utterly indignant with herself.

Harrington stood confounded at perceiving how comprehensible all her actions and reactions had been, once he got her point of view. He was not only deeply touched but moved to a new admiration for that stern slender figure, so utterly out of patience with itself. "Oh, Billie!" he was going to cry out to her in remorse when she, in a plaintive little voice, eyes still turned out the window, and, not in extenuation at all, merely as completing the record, recalled: