"Don't call me that, please," I said and drew away my arm. "Tut, tut! Come now! You and I are going to be friends." She treated me as if I were aged five. "You know," she went on, "when I come, I think there'll be an extra saddle horse, in one of the stalls in your stable." She used that mysterious tone you do to children when talking about Santa Claus. "I think if you will look very hard you will find your initials on him somewhere, Bobbie." "I wouldn't touch it, Miss Campbell. I wouldn't touch one hair of the horse; and please call me Lucy." We were breaking out of the narrow wood-path, and coming to a travelled road. We walked in silence till we reached the highway. It was almost dark. Suddenly Edith Campbell spoke. "I must be hustling homeward," she said glibly, and as if nothing unpleasant had occurred between us she asked, "Lend me your hand, will you, Bobbie, please?" I helped her mount, in silence. "That's the way," she said. "Thanks. Now look here, poor little childie," she broke off, looking down at me like a queen from her saddle, "whenever you're ready to be friends, remember, so am I. All right, Pierre!" and she cantered off in the dusk. I stood quite still for a moment, and then right to that lonely, empty road, I said out loud, "I can't live with her. I can't--I can't! Dear Alec, I tried. Dear Father and Tom and Elise, I tried, but I can't, I can't!" And all the dark way home, all the long night through, I ran over and over the words like a squirrel in a revolving cage. CHAPTER XII For three days and nights I wandered over the ruins of my life, back and forth, helpless, almost driven mad by the horror of it; and then at last Dr. Maynard came. I had not realised that he had been out of town. I had been so stunned by Alec's announcement that I had not missed him. He had been down to Baltimore for three days attending some sort of a medical conference and I had not known that he had been outside of Hilton.