smile, when suddenly the anger seemed to flow away from the body of the
parson and he smiled down into the upturned eyes with great gentleness
as we started down the steps together.

"I didn't interrupt the salvation of Charlotte's soul, did I?" Nickols
asked, as he took my outstretched hand in his left hand and raised it to
his lips as he held out his right to the Reverend Mr. Goodloe. So real
had been that fraction of an instant when I had stood between the two
men that I almost felt the sensation of alarm a second time as I saw
Nickols' slender, magical, artist's fingers laid in the slim, powerful
hand of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, but the gentle voice reassured me as
the Harpeth Jaguar answered the intruder, or what he must have felt to
be the intruder, for I had something of that feeling myself at the
advent of my lover at the moment he had chosen for his arrival.

"The trouble began about apple dumplings and hard sauce," I said, as
quickly as my wits would act.

"How are you, Nickols Powers, since we separated 'somewhere in France,'
you with your sketch books and I with my hospital stretchers? I got a
dandy lung clip; did you bring away any lead?" And the parson's voice
was gentle and cordial and full of a laughing reminiscence.

"Didn't smell powder after I left you," answered Nickols, as we all
ascended the steps and stood in a group before the door. "I got my books
full of sketches of bits of treasures that the war might destroy, and
beat it back to civilization. Did the Madonna of the Red Cross you had
in tow come across as sentimentally as was threatened?" Nickols' voice
was as cordial as the Reverend Goodloe's, but something in me made me
resent the question and the manner it was asked.