She left Roger with his pulses beating madly. What did she mean? Did she think that--Mary----? He went up to the Tower Rooms to dress for dinner, with his mind in a whirl. The windows were open and the warm air blew in. Looking out, he could see in the distance the shining river--like a silver ribbon, and the white shaft of the Monument, which seemed to touch the sky. But he saw more than that; he saw his future and Mary's; again he dreamed his dreams. If he had hoped for a moment alone that night with the lady of his heart, he was doomed to disappointment, for Leila and her father came to dinner. Leila was very still and sweet in her widow's black, the General brooding over her. And again Roger had the sense that in this house of sorrow there was no place for love-making. For the joy that might be his--he must wait; even though he wearied in the waiting. And it was while he waited that he lunched one day with Porter Bigelow. The invitation had surprised him, and he had felt vaguely troubled and oppressed by the thought that back of it might be some motive as yet unrevealed. But there had been nothing to do but accept, and at one o'clock he was at the University Club. For a time they spoke of indifferent things, then Porter said, bluntly, "I am not going to beat about the bush, Poole. I've asked you here to talk about Mary Ballard." "Yes?" "You're in love with her?" "Yes--but I question your right to play inquisitor." "I haven't any right, except my interest in Mary. But I claim that my interest justifies the inquisition." "Perhaps." "You want to marry her?" Roger shifted his position, and leaned forward, meeting Porter's stormy eyes squarely. "Again I question your right, Bigelow." [Illustration: "Again I question your right."] "It isn't a question of right now, Poole, and you know it. You're in love with her, I'm in love with her. We both want her. In days past men settled such things with swords or pistols. You and I are civilized and modern; but it's got to be settled just the same." "Miss Ballard will have to settle it--not you or I." "She can't settle it. Mary is a dreamer. You capture her with your imagination--with your talk of your work--and your people and the little gardens, and all that. And she sees it as you want her to see it, not as it really is. But I know the deadly dullness, the awfulness. Why, man, I spent a winter down there, at one of the resorts and now and then we rode through the country. It was a desert, I tell you, Poole, a desert; it is no place for a woman." "You saw nothing but the charred pines and the sand. I could show you other things." "What, for example?"