he wasn't looking at her and she composed her face. "He didn't
mean to shock you or--or offend you. He says he gave you reason enough
to be offended, but only because you didn't understand. He says he
has always--cared for you a lot. He said he thought you were the
most--well, about the most perfect thing in the world. Only to-night
he said he got carried off his feet and went further than he had any
right to. And he simply can't bear to have you think that he meant
anything--disrespectful. He felt he had to apologize to you before he
went home, but you didn't come down so finally he told me about it and
made me promise that I'd tell you to-night. Of course, I don't know what
he did," Rush concluded, "but I can tell you this. Graham Stannard's a
white man; they don't make them whiter than that."

Her reply, although it was unequivocally to the effect that it was all
right--Graham needn't worry--failed, altogether, to reassure him. Was
this, after all, he wondered, what she had exploded about? She prevented
further inquiry, however, by an abrupt change of the subject, demanding
to be told what it was that he and his father, all these hours, had been
talking about.

He took up the topic with unforced enthusiasm. He had been surprised and
deeply touched over the discovery that his father did not require to be
argued out of the project either to send him back to Harvard or to start
him in at the bottom in Martin Whitney's bank. "If he'd just been
through it all himself, he couldn't have understood any better how I
feel about it."

"Did you tell him about the farm?" Mary asked.

This was an idea of Graham's which she and Rush had been developing with