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“I’ve got to get away. I’m not going to marry Maxwell, Amy.”

“Anne! What made you change your mind?”

“I can’t tell you. Please don’t ask me. But I wish you would write to Aunt Elizabeth.”

“I had a letter from her yesterday. She says we can come at any time. But–have you told Max?”

“Not yet.”

“Has he done anything?”

“No. It’s just–that I can’t marry him. Don’t ask me, Amy.” She broke down in a storm of tears.

Amy, soothing her, wondered if after all Anne cared for Murray Flint. It was, she felt, the only solution possible. Surely a girl would not throw away a chance to marry a man like Maxwell Sears for nothing.

For Amy had learned in the days that she had spent at the farm that Maxwell Sears was a man to reckon with. She was very grateful for what he had done for her, and she had been glad of Anne’s engagement. Murray would perhaps be disappointed, but there would still be herself and Ethel.

It was not easy to explain things to Maxwell.

“Why are you going now?” he demanded, and was impatient when they told him that Aunt Elizabeth expected them. “I don’t understand it at all. It upsets all of my plans for you, Anne.”

That night when he brought Anne’s candle she was not on the stairs. Winifred and Amy had gone up.

“Anne! Anne!” he called softly.

She came to the top rail and leaned over. “I’m going to bed in the dark. There’s a wonderful moon.”

“Come down–for a minute.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll come up,” masterfully.

He mounted the stairs two at a time; but when he reached the landing the door was shut!

In the morning he asked her about it. “Why, dearest?”

“Max dear, I can’t marry you.”

“Nonsense!” His voice was sharp. He laid his hands heavily on her shoulders. “Why not? Look at me, Anne. Why not?”

“I’m not going to marry–anybody.”

That was all he could get out of her. He pleaded, raged, and grew at last white and still with anger. “You might at least tell me your reasons.”

She said that she would write. Perhaps she could say it better on paper. And she was very, very sorry, but she couldn’t.

Winifred knew that something was up, but made no comment. Amy, carrying out their program of departure, had a sense of regret.

After all, it had been a lovely life, and there were worse things than being a sister to Maxwell Sears. Her voice broke a little as she tried to thank him on their last morning.

He wrung her hand. “Say a good word for me with Anne. I don’t know what’s the matter with her.”

Neither did Amy. And if she was Maxwell’s advocate how could she be Murray’s? She flushed a little.

“Anne’s such a child.”

He remembered how he had called her a corking kid. She was more than that to him now. She stood in the doorway in her gray sailor hat and gray cape.

“Anne,” he said, “you must have a last bunch of pansies from the garden. Come out and help me pick them.”

In the garden he asked, “Are you going to kiss me good-bye?”

“No, Max. Please–“

“Then it’s ‘God bless you, dearest.'”

He forgot the pansies and they went back to where the car waited.

VII

Anne’s letter, written from the Eastern Shore, was a long and childish screed. “We have always been beggars on horseback,” she said. “Of course you couldn’t know that, Max. We have gone without bread so that we could be grand and elegant. We have gone without fire so that we could buy our satin gowns for fashionable functions. We went without butter for a year so that Amy could entertain the Strangeways, whom she had met years ago in Europe. I wouldn’t dare tell you what that dinner cost us, but we had a cabinet member or two, and the British Ambassador.

“You wondered why I liked Dickens. Well, I read him so that I could get a good meal by proxy. I used to gloat over the feasts at Wardle’s, and Mr. Stiggins’ hot toast. And when I met you you gave me–everything. Murray Flint thinks that because I am thin and pale I am all spirit, and I’m afraid you have the same idea. You didn’t dream, did you, that I was pale because I hadn’t had enough to eat? And when you told me that you wanted me to be your wife I looked ahead and saw the good food and the roaring fires, and I didn’t think of anything else. I honestly didn’t think of you for a moment, Max.