So Debby waited at the gate while the almost invisible Meldrum chattered on. She was so afraid that he would go every next minute that she hardly heard what he said. But he had only a hotel room ahead of him. He was used to late hours. He was in a mood for talk. The paralyzed Debby was a perfect listener, and in that intense dark she was as beautiful as Cleopatra would have been. To her he was solely a voice, a voice of strange cynicisms, yet of strange comfort to her. He was laughing at the people she held in awe. "This town’s a joke to me," he said. "It’s a side-show full of freaks." And he mocked the great folk of the village as if they were yokels. He laughed at their customs. He ridiculed many, many things that Debby had believed and suffered from believing. He ridiculed married people and marriage from the superior heights of one who could have married many and had rejected all. It was strangely pleasant hearing to her who had observed marriage from the humble depths of one whom all had rejected. He talked till he heard the town clock whine eleven times, then he said: "Good Lord! I didn’t know it was so late. I must have talked your arm off, Debby. I don’t get these moods often. It takes a mighty good listener to loosen me up. Good night! Don’t let any of these fellows bunco you into marrying ’em. There’s nothing in it, Debby. Take it from me. Good night." She felt rather than saw that he lifted his hat. She felt again his big hand enveloping hers, and she answered its squeeze with a desperate little clench of her own. He left her wonderfully uplifted. Now she felt less an exile from marriage than a rebel. She almost convinced herself that she had kept out of matrimony because she was too good for it. The solitary cell of her bed was a queenly dais when she crept into it. She dreamed that General Kitchener asked for her hand and she refused it. CHAPTER V Meldrum’s cynicisms had been strangely opportune to the strangely opportune to the despondent old maid. He unwittingly helped her over a deep ditch and got her past a bad night. But when she woke, the next morning was but the same old resumption of the same old day. Poverty, loneliness, and the inanity of a manless household were again her portion. The face she washed explained to her why she was not sought after by the men. The hair she combed and wadded on her cranium clouded with no romance even in her own eyes. She realized that she was not loved for the simple reason that she was not lovely. She had never been a rose, and men did not pluck dog-fennel to wear. And the camomile could never become a marguerite by wishing to be one.