She shivered. Before her stretched the darkness and storms of a long winter. Even Constance's coming would not make up for it. And yet a year ago Constance had seemed everything. She crossed the hall to the dining-room and looked out of the window. The garden was dead. The fountain had ceased to play. But the little bronze boy still flung his gay defiance to wind and weather. Pittiwitz, following her, murmured a mewing complaint. Mary picked her up; since Roger's going the gray cat had kept away from the emptiness of the upper rooms. With the little purring creature hugged close, Mary reviewed her worries--the world was at sixes and sevens. Even Porter was proving difficult. Since the Sunday when Roger had saved her from the fire, Porter had adopted an air of possession. He claimed her at all times and seasons; she had a sense of being caught in a web woven of kindness and thoughtfulness and tender care, but none the less a web which held her fast and against her will. Whimsically it came to her that the four men in her life were opposed in groups of two: Gordon and Porter stood arrayed on the side of logical preferences; Barry and Roger on the side of illogical sympathies. Gordon had conveyed to her, in rather subtle fashion, his disapproval of Roger. It was only in an occasional phrase, such as "Poor Poole," or "if all of his story were known." But Mary had grasped that, from the standpoint of her brother-in-law, a man who had failed to fulfil the promise of his youth might be dismissed as a social derelict. As for Barry--the situation with regard to him had become acute. His first disappearance after the coming of Constance had resulted in Gordon's assuming the responsibility of the search for him. He had found Barry in a little town on the upper Potomac, ostensibly on a fishing trip, and again there was a need for fighting dragons. But Gordon did not fight with the same weapons as Roger Poole. His arguments had been shrewd, keen, but unsympathetic. And the result had been a strained relation between him and Barry. The boy had felt himself misunderstood. Gordon had sat in judgment. Constance had tearfully agreed with Gordon, and Mary, torn between her sense of Gordon's rightness, and her own championship of Barry, had been strung to the point of breaking. She turned from the window, and went up-stairs slowly. In the Sanctum, Constance and Aunt Isabelle were sewing. At last Aunt Isabelle had come into her own. She spent her days in putting fine stitches into infinitesimal garments. There was about her constantly the perfume of the sachet powder with which she was scenting the fine lawn and lace which glorified certain baskets and bassinets. When she was not sewing she was knitting--little silken socks for a Cupid's foot, little warm caps, doll's size; puffy wool blankets on big wooden needles.