What Mary-Clare did see in Northrup's heroine was a maddening possibility that he was letting slip through his fingers. At first this puzzled her; pained her. She was still timid about expressing her feeling. But so strong was Northrup's touch in most of his work that at last he drove his quiet, silent critic from her moorings. She asked that she might have a copy of a certain part of the book. "I want to think it out with my woman-brain," she laughingly explained. "When you read right at this spot--well, you see, it doesn't seem clear. When I have thought it out alone, then I will tell you and be--oh! very bold." And Northrup had complied. He had blazed for himself, some time before, a roundabout trail through the briery underbrush from the inn to within a few hundred feet of the cabin. Often he watched from this hidden limit. He saw the smoke rise from the chimney; once or twice he caught a glimpse of Mary-Clare sitting at the rough table, and, after she had taken those chapters away, he knew they were being read there. Alone, waiting, expecting he knew not what, Northrup became alarmingly aware that Mary-Clare had got a tremendous hold upon him. The knowledge was almost staggering. He had felt so sure; had risked so much. He could not deceive himself any longer. Like other men, he had played with fire and had been burnt. "But," he devoutly thought, "thank God, I have started no conflagration." CHAPTER XI There had been five days in which to face a rather ugly and bald fact before Northrup again saw Mary-Clare. He had employed the time, he tried to make himself believe, wisely, sanely. He had spent a good portion of it at the Point. He had irritated Larry beyond endurance by friendly overtures. In an effort to be just, he tried to include Rivers in his reconstruction. The truth, he sternly believed, would never be known, but if it were, certainly Rivers might have something to say for himself, and with humiliation Northrup regarded himself "as other men." He had never, thank heaven! looked upon himself as better than other men, but he had thought his struggle, early in life, his unhappy parenthood, and later devotion to his work, had set him apart from the general temptations of many young men and had given him a distaste for follies that could hold no suggestion of mystery for him. Well, Fate had merely bided its time. With every reason for escaping a pitfall, he had floundered in. "Like other men?" Northrup sneered at himself. No other man could be such a consummate fool, knowing what he knew. Viewed from this position, Larry was not as contemptible as he had once appeared. But Rivers resented Northrup's advances, putting the lowest interpretation upon them. In this he was upheld by Maclin, who was growing restive under the tension that did not break, but stretched endlessly on.