Just inside the grounds she halted and viewed the house with speculative eyes. Lights gleamed from the hall, the living room, and from one upstairs window. Then, with Charlie's hand still in hers, she walked boldly up the driveway and mounted the steps. Within the shielding shadow of the veranda she paused for a long moment and listened. Turning to the child she laid her finger on her lips with a gesture of silence. Charlie beamed understandingly. Mary's strange behavior was as interesting to him as though it were a new game invented for his pleasure. He entered completely into the spirit of it.
"Now," whispered the girl, "Mary is going to ring the bell and run away. Charlie must stand still and wait until someone opens the door. If no one comes, Charlie must ring the bell again. And remember, he mustn't tell who brought him home!"
"Charlie won't tell," gravely assured the youngster.
Mary pressed a firm finger on the bell and held it there for a second. Then she darted down the steps, around a corner of the house and across a wide stretch of frozen lawn. She remembered that she could climb the low fence at the back of the grounds, cut across a field which lay below them and emerge on a small street not far from the Deans' home. She did not pause for breath until she reached the street she had in mind. Flushed and panting from her wild flight it was several minutes before she could compose herself sufficiently to go on toward home. Luckily for her she met but two persons, a boy of perhaps fifteen and a laboring man. Neither gave her more than the merest glance.
But her last ordeal was yet to come. What would Marjorie and her mother think when they saw her? They would immediately guess that something unusual must have happened to bring her home from the party before it had hardly more than begun. Her recent experience had left her in no mood for explanations. She decided to try slipping quietly in at the rear door of the house. There was, of course, a possibility that it might be locked, but if it were not—so much the better for her.
There was an instant of breathless suspense as she noiselessly turned the knob. It yielded to her touch, and she stole into the kitchen and up the back stairs like an unsubstantial shadow of the night, rather than a very tired and sore-hearted girl. Once in her room she sat down on her bed to think things over. She dared not move about for fear of being heard by Marjorie or her mother. Long she sat, moodily reviewing the year that had promised so much, yet had yielded her nothing but dissension and sorrow. One bare, ugly fact confronted her, looming up like a hideous monster whose dreadful claws had shredded her peace of mind and now waved at her the tattered fragments. It had all been her fault. For the first time she saw herself as she really was. A jealous, suspicious, hateful girl. It was she, not Marjorie, who had been unfaithful to friendship. But she had gone on blindly, unreasoningly, preferring to think the worst, until now it was too late to bridge the gap that she had daily widened between herself and her chum by her absurd jealousy. She could never regain her lost ground. She felt that Marjorie's patience with her had long since been exhausted. She dared not, could not, plead for reinstatement. All that remained to be done was to go through the rest of that dreadful year alone. When she and Marjorie had finished their sophomore course she would go quietly away, and they would, perhaps, never meet again.
Alone with her bitter remorse, Mary wept until she could cry no more. As is usually the case with youth, she was sweeping in her self-condemnation. But that bitter hour of self-revelation did more to arouse within her the determination to conquer herself and establish the foundation for a noble womanhood than she could possibly believe.
At last she pulled herself together to play the final scene in her evening's drama. Mrs. Dean had given her a latchkey, in order that she might let herself into the house, should she return from the party after the Deans had retired. At half-past ten o'clock she heard Marjorie and her mother come up the stairs to their rooms. Mr. Dean was away from home on a business trip. When all sounds of conversation between the two women had ceased and the house had apparently settled down for the night, Mary crept softly out of her room and down the stairs. Opening the hall door with stealthy fingers, she stepped into the vestibule. She listened intently for a sign from above that her soft-footed journey down the stairs had been discovered. But none came. Turning deliberately about, she retraced her steps, closing the hall door with sufficient force to announce her arrival. Without attempt at stealth she walked across the hall, up the stairs and into the pretty blue room that she had lately left. The closing of her own door purposely sounded her home coming.
"Is that you, Mary?" called Marjorie's voice from the next room.
Mary trembled with positive relief at the signal success of her manoeuver. Steadying her voice, she replied, "Yes, it is I."