"No, I wouldn't," said Mary quickly.
"Wait till I finish," said Porter, coolly. "I'd have shut you up in a
tower, and every night I'd have come and sung beneath your window, and
at last you'd have dropped a red rose down to me."
They were laughing together now, and Delilah on the other side of
Porter demanded, "What's the joke?"
"There isn't any," said Porter; "it is all deadly earnest--for me, if
not for Mary."
And now a horse was down; there was a quick bugle-note, silence. Like
clockwork, everything had stopped.
People were asking, "Is anybody hurt?"
Barry looked down at Leila. Then he leaned toward her father. "I'm
going to take this child outside," he said; "she's as white as a sheet.
She doesn't like it. We will meet you all later."
Leila's color came back in the sunshine and air and she insisted that
Barry should return to the hall.
"I don't want you to miss it," she said, "just because I am so silly.
I can stay in Porter's car and wait."
"I don't want to see it--it's an old story to me."
So they walked on toward Arlington, entering at last the gate which
leads into that wonderful city of the nation's Northern dead, which was
once the home of Southern hospitality. In a sheltered corner they sat
down and Barry smiled at Little-Lovely Leila.
"Are you all right now, kiddie?"
"Yes," but she did not smile.
He bent down and peered through her veil. "Take it off and let me look
at your eyes."
With trembling hands, she took out a pin or two and let it fall.
"You've been crying."
"Oh, Barry," the words were a cry--the cry of a little wounded bird.
He stopped smiling. "Blessed one, what is it?"
"I can't tell you."
"You must."
"No."
A low-growing magnolia hid them from the rest of the world; he put
masterful hands on her shoulders and turned her face toward him--her
little unhappy face.
"Now tell me."
She shook herself free. "Don't, Barry."
He flushed suddenly and sensitively. "I know I'm not much of a fellow."
She answered with a dignity which seemed to surmount her usual
childishness, "Barry, if a man wants a woman to believe in him, he's
got to make himself worthy of it."
"Well," defiantly, "what have I done?"