Even in that first moment when she stopped and caught her breath, audibly, from sheer surprise, the girl sensed the indecision in the attitude of the man before her. But she could not know that it was not a thing of the moment--that irresolution; could not know that throughout the week Steve had periodically abused himself for his inability to settle the question once and for all, and leave his brain free for more important things. Just as often as he told himself that he would not go, he had found himself reopening the mental discussion, and yet--and strangely enough--it was not the recollection of Barbara's repeated invitations, or even her distress over Garry Devereau, who had been ceaselessly in his thoughts ever since she had spoken of him, which finally achieved the decision. An insistent desire again to meet the Honorable Archibald Wickersham in the end led him to request Fat Joe to hook up the team, that day at noon, for the long drive down river. With Steve himself handling the reins, they had rolled the thirty miles at a speed which might have mildly surprised Fat Joe had he not been accustomed to putting two and two together to make six or eight or more. And Fat Joe's thin tenor was just drifting faintly off down the hill--a mournful rendition of "Home, Sweet Home"--when the girl stepped noiselessly forward and put a hand, feather-light, upon the man's arm. Again she felt the swift tensing of the flesh beneath; she fell back a step before the startling abruptness with which Steve whirled. She even threw up one small hand, as if to shield her face. And then, the cloak falling open at her throat, a slender, swaying figure in blue and shimmering white, she stood and flung a little laugh at him--a laugh a little unsteady, a bit tinged with mockery, and as untroubled as the spirit of youth itself. "Is that the way you always prepare to greet your friends?" she asked. The man just stood and stared at her--stared much as if he mistrusted his own ears and eyes. "Not all my friends," his slow voice drawled at last, but even the words were tinged with doubt. "Not all my friends," he said. And again he was conscious first of her slimness, her smallness. He was aware of the insistent, impish suggestion of boyishness in tilted head and poised body, before the rays that wavered over his shoulder from the windows behind him disclosed the misty gladness of welcome in her eyes, splashed now with points of light not so very unlike the blurred star-points in the infinitely deep, purplish pool of the sky above them. Silently the man reached out and found the hand which had lain for a moment upon his arm. "So you are--you," he murmured, when his fingers touched hers. "I wasn't--just sure."