"I know," he said. "And it is the petty anxieties that have made you put
the woman to the wall. I'm here this morning to save you some of them; to
take the man's part in your outsetting, or as much of it as I can. When
are you going to give me the right to come between you and all the little
worries, Elinor?"

She turned from him with a faint gesture of cold impatience.

"You are forgetting your promise," she said quite dispassionately. "We
were to be friends; as good friends as we were before that evening at Bar
Harbor. I told you it would be impossible, and you said you were strong
enough to make it possible."

He looked at her with narrowing eyes.

"It is possible, in a way. But I'd like to know what door of your heart it
is that I haven't been able to open."

She ignored the pleading and took refuge in a woman's expedient.

"If you insist on going back to the beginnings, I shall go back, also--to
Abigail and the trunk-packing."

He planted himself squarely before her, the mask lifted and the masterful
soul asserting itself boldly.

"It wouldn't do any good, you know. I am going with you."

"To Abigail and the trunk-room?"