The editor did not hear him, or did not think it necessary to respond from behind the newspaper which he had lifted up between them, and Bartley went out. He did not stop to cash his order; he made boyish haste to show it to Marcia, as something more authentic than the money itself, and more sacred. As he hurried homeward he figured Marcia's ecstasy in his thought. He saw himself flying up the stairs to their attic three steps at a bound, and bursting into the room, where she sat eager and anxious, and flinging the order into her lap; and then, when she had read it with rapture at the sum, and pride in the smartness with which he had managed the whole affair, he saw himself catching her up and dancing about the floor with her. He thought how fond of her he was, and he wondered that he could ever have been cold or lukewarm. She was standing at the window of Mrs. Nash's little reception-room when he reached the house. It was not to be as he had planned, but he threw her a kiss, glad of the impatience which would not let her wait till he could find her in their own room, and he had the precious order in his hand to dazzle her eyes as soon as he should enter. But, as he sprang into the hall, his foot struck against a trunk and some boxes. “Hello!” he cried, “Your things have come!” Marcia lingered within the door of the reception-room; she seemed afraid to come out. “Yes,” she said, faintly; “father brought them. He has just been here.” He seemed there still, and the vision unnerved her as if Bartley and he had been confronted there in reality. Her husband had left her hardly a quarter of an hour, when a hack drove up to the door, and her father alighted. She let him in herself, before he could ring, and waited tremulously for what he should do or say. But he merely took her hand, and, stooping over, gave her the chary kiss with which he used to greet her at home when he returned from an absence. She flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, father!” “Well, well! There, there!” he said, and then he went into the reception-room with her; and there was nothing in his manner to betray that anything unusual had happened since they last met. He kept his hat on, as his fashion was, and he kept on his overcoat, below which the skirts of his dress-coat hung an inch or two; he looked old, and weary, and shabby. “I can't leave Bartley, father,” she began, hysterically. “I haven't come to separate you from your husband, Marcia. What made you think so? It's your place to stay with him.” “He's out, now,” she answered, in an incoherent hopefulness. “He's just gone. Will you wait and see him, father?” “No, I guess I can't wait,” said the old man. “It wouldn't do any good for us to meet now.” “Do you think he coaxed me away? He didn't. He took pity on me,--he forgave me. And I didn't mean to deceive you when I left home, father. But I couldn't help trying to see Bartley again.”