Perry, though always at his distance, was placed by this almost at his ease. "Molly must answer you for herself--but she doesn't really know much more what to make of you than I do." Ralph's wide eyes stared his reply still more than his lips could form it. "You don't know what to make of me----?" "Only she likes nevertheless what you do to her that way as her lover. She's not too afraid of you yet for _that!_" Perry explained with a new authority. This was extraordinary to Ralph--his having gathered such things to tell from that lapse of their consciousness, Molly's and his own, of anything but their possession of each other. "Oh well, I'm glad I have still that advantage!"--and Ralph kept his laugh at least brave. "But was it because _they_ didn't know what to make of us----?" Perry had really arrived at an approach to clear suggestion. "We're lovers so accepted and blessed----!" He would puzzle it out, but appealed to his Companion for help. "No, it isn't that they were shocked at your freedom"--Perry said--"though you _were_ free!" "Then why did they make off?" our young man pressed. "Well, you must get it from themselves." "Then is there nothing I shall get from you--as my brother-that's-to-be?" Perry considered of it, resisting confusion. "I'm not your brother yet." "No"--Ralph also considered: "not in a single morning!" This exchange, none the less, seemed really to further him, and under the aid of it Ralph kept his stand. "But you like me so." "_I_ like you----?" Perry rather growled it, but it was as if he wondered. "I mean you all do, and you will, you'll see,--especially if you find you can assist me. It's there," Ralph explained, "that your goodnature will be touched." "Oh but I thought it was yours we were so much to look to. Wasn't it you," Perry asked, "that was to come so prodigiously to _our_ assistance?" "So I take it," Ralph irresistibly smiled; "and what else in the world is it then that I'm so ready for?" Perry could still mind his steps. "I don't know that you've been striking me as quite so ready!" "Not so ready as you expected?" It made Ralph's vision jump. "Do you mean that you want money?" "Indeed I do, by God!" Ralph stared in fair elation--such an oddity of relief. "Will you have some now?" "'Now'----?" Something, at this, looked out of Perry's face as not before--a happier, easier Perry, though still embarrassed and divided and with an awkwardness of wonder that made his kinsman laugh out.