He looked very handsome and very manly, as he stood there pleading. But Mary had made up her mind.
“I can't, Crawford,” she said. “Perhaps I don't know. I do know that it would not be right for me to say what you want me to say—now. Go home to your father; he needs you. Tell him everything and then—write me.”
He looked at her, a long, long look. Then he nodded slowly.
“All right,” he said; “I will. I will tell him that I mean to marry you. If he says yes—as he will, I'm sure—then I'll write you that. If he says no, I'll write you that. But in either case, Mary Lathrop, I shall marry you just the same. Your own no will be the only thing that can prevent it. And now may I come and see you tomorrow evening?”
“Not tomorrow, Crawford. When will you start for home?”
“Saturday, I think. May I come the day after tomorrow? Just to say good-by, you know.”
Mary was troubled. She could not deny him and yet she was certain it would be better for them both if he did not come.
“Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “But only to say good-by. You must promise that.”
There was a ring at the bell. Then Maggie, the maid, appeared to announce that the Howe motor car was waiting at the curb. A few moments later Mary was in her room adjusting her new hat before the mirror. Ordinarily, adjusting that hat would have been an absorbing and painstaking performance; just now it was done with scarcely a thought. How devoutly she wished that the Howe car and the Howe dinner were waiting for anyone in the wide world but her! She did not wish to meet strangers; she did not wish to go anywhere, above all she did not wish to eat. That evening, of all evenings in her life, she wished to be alone. However, accepted invitations are implied obligations and Mary, having adjusted the hat, gave her eyes a final dab with a handkerchief and cold water and hastened down to answer the call to social martyrdom.
It was not excruciating torture, that dinner in the Howe dining-room, even to a young lady who had just listened to a proposal of marriage and desired to think of nothing less important. Mr. Howe was big and jolly. Mrs. Howe was gray-haired and gracious and Barbara was—Barbara. Also, there was a friend of Mr. Howe's, an elderly gentleman named Green, who it seemed was one of a firm of wholesale grocers downtown, and who told funny stories and, by way of proving that they were funny, laughed heartiest of all at the ending of each. He sat next Mrs. Howe during dinner, but later, when they were all in the handsome drawing-room, he came over and seated himself upon the sofa next Mary and entered into conversation with her.