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"
You defy me?"
No, but I deny your right to criticize my actions. Have you no friends of
"
whom I should disapprove?"
John fell back a pace. The colour ebbed slowly from his face.
"What do you mean?" he said, in an unsteady voice.
"You see!" said Mary quietly. "You do see, don't you, that you have no right
to dictate to me as to the choice of my friends?"
John glanced at her pleadingly, a stricken look on his face.
"No right? Have I no right, Mary?" he said unsteadily. He stretched out his
hands. "Mary----"
For a moment, I thought she wavered. A softer expression came over her
face, then suddenly she turned almost fiercely away.
"None!"
She was walking away when John sprang after her, and caught her by the
arm.
"
Mary"--his voice was very quiet now--"are you in love with this fellow
Bauerstein?"
She hesitated, and suddenly there swept across her face a strange
expression, old as the hills, yet with something eternally young about it. So
might some Egyptian sphinx have smiled.
She freed herself quietly from his arm, and spoke over her shoulder.
"Perhaps," she said; and then swiftly passed out of the little glade, leaving
John standing there as though he had been turned to stone.
Rather ostentatiously, I stepped forward, crackling some dead branches with
my feet as I did so. John turned. Luckily, he took it for granted that I had
only just come upon the scene.
"
Hullo, Hastings. Have you seen the little fellow safely back to his cottage?
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