"I know. And I'm willing to stand on my merits." The temper which
belonged to Porter's red head was asserting itself. "I'm willing to
stand on my merits. I offer you a past which is clean--a future of
devotion. It's worth something, Mary--in the years to come when you
know more of men, you'll understand that it is worth something."
"I know," she said, her hand on his, "it is worth a great deal. But I
don't want to marry anybody." It was the old cry reiterated. "I want
to live the life I have planned for a little while--then if Love claims
me, it must be love--not just a comfortable getting a home for myself
along the lines of least resistance. I want to work and earn, and know
that I can do it. If I were to marry you, it would be just because I
couldn't see any other way out of my difficulties, and you wouldn't
want me that way, Porter."
He did want her. But he recognized the futility of wanting her. For a
little while, at least, he must let her have her way. Indeed, she
would have it, whether he let her or not. But Roger Poole should not
have her. He should not. All that was primitive in Porter rose to
combat the claims which she made for his rival.
"I knew there'd be trouble when you let the Tower Rooms," he said
heavily at last; "a man like that always appeals to a girl's sense of
romance."
The Tower Rooms! Mary saw Roger as he had stood in them for the first
time amid all the confusion of Constance's flight from the home nest.
That night he had seemed to her merely a person who would pay the
rent--yet the money which she had received from him had been the
smallest part.
She drifted away on the tide of her dreams, and Porter felt sharply the
sense of her utter detachment from him.
"Mary," he said, tensely, "Mary, oh, my little Contrary Mary--you
aren't going to slip out of my life. Say that you won't."
"I'm not slipping away from you," she said, "any more than I am
slipping away from my old self. I don't understand it, Porter. I only
know that what you call contrariness is a force within me which I can't
control. I wish that I could do the things which you want me to do, I
wish I could be what Gordon and Constance and Barry and even Aunt
Frances want--but there's something which carries me on and on, and
seems to say, 'There's more than this in the world for you'--and with
that call in my ears, I have to follow."