have knocked--I--er--mean I _would_ have knocked just the same."

Wilmot took one slow step toward the famous sculptor, then smiled,
picked up the fellow's pipe, and returned it to him. "I saw you put it
down just before you left," he said. "I think there is nothing else you
have forgotten, _is_ there? If there is I think it will be best not to
come back for it until I have gone. Meanwhile you will have time to
shave and bathe and make yourself presentable."

Scupper, sure that he was not actually going to be hit, escaped with an
ease and jauntiness which he was far from feeling. And Barbara, the high
tension relieved, burst out laughing.

It was Wilmot's turn to look sullen. He had felt that the sheer animal
force of his love was holding and even moulding Barbara to his will, as
no tenderness and delicacy had ever done. But at the sculptor's
entrance, the honest if brutal cave-man had fled, like some noble savage
before a talking-machine, and left in a state of civilized helplessness
a young gentleman who could not find anything to say for himself.

As for Barbara, she had never seen Wilmot look as he had looked, or
heard those quivering, broken tones in his voice. The savage in her had
gone out to him with open arms and, behold, the primal force which,
standing like an island of refuge in a sea of doubt, she had been about
to clasp was but an empty shadow. That Wilmot had not done very nobly
with his talents, that there were weaknesses in his character and
record, things even that needed explaining, had not at the moment of his
mastery mattered to her a jot. But now such thoughts flocked to her like
birds to a tree; and she was glad that she had escaped from a situation
that had so nearly overwhelmed her reason and drowned her common sense