"Why shouldn"t I be honest with you? I can"t help it. Something has suddenly brought him into my mind. I was wondering----"

"Yes."

"I was wondering where he is now--to-night. It is so beautiful here.

Everything has been done to make us happy. I was thinking that perhaps if I had written him a line I might have saved him some terrible trial.

It was only a boy-and-girl affair, of course, but----"

Patricia suddenly stopped speaking, and both of them turned their heads toward the dark bank of bushes behind them.

"What was it?" she asked.

"A dead branch falling," he replied.

They listened again, but all they heard was the sound of the orchestra and the voices of the dancers.

"You"re teaching me a lesson in patience," Crabb began again soberly. "I can wait, of course. I"m not jealous of _him_," he said. "I was only wondering how you could think of him at all."

"I don"t think of him--not in _that_ way. I believe I haven"t thought of him at all--until to-night. To-night, I can"t help thinking of others less fortunate than ourselves. I suppose it"s only the natural thing that he should suffer. He never seemed to get things right, somehow; his point of view was always askew. He was a wild boy--but he was human."

She paused and clasped her hands before her. Crabb sat silent beside her, but his brow was clouded. When he spoke it was in a voice low and constrained.

"Do you think it kind--wise to speak of this now?"

"I was thinking that perhaps if he"d had a little luck----"

"He might have come back to you?"

Patricia turned toward him and with a swift movement took one of his hands in both of hers.

"Don"t speak in that way," she pleaded. "You mustn"t."

But his fingers still refused to respond to her pressure.

"If I think of him at all, it is because I have learned how great a thing is love and how much the greater must be its loss. You know," she whispered, timidly, "you know I--I love you."

"G.o.d bless you for that," he murmured.

They were so absorbed that they did not hear the sound behind them--a suppressed moan like that of an animal in pain.

"Will you forgive me?" asked the girl, at last. "It is all over now. I shall never speak of it again. I"ve spoiled your evening. You don"t regret?"

Crabb laughed happily.

"I"ll promise to be good," she said, softly. "I"ll do whatever you ask me----"

"Will you marry me next month?"

"Yes," she murmured, "whenever you wish."

He took her in his arms and kissed her. They stood for some time deaf to all voices but those in their hearts. There was a breaking of tiny twigs under the trees behind them and a drab figure came out into the open on the other side and vanished into the darkness by the garden wall. And as they walked back into the house neither guessed just what had happened except that some new miracle, which, really, is very old, had happened to them.

As a matter of fact, when Patricia announced the miracle in the form of her engagement to Mortimer Crabb a prayer of thanksgiving went up from at least three young women of her acquaintance. And though these feminine pet.i.tioners were left as much to their own devices as before the announcement, there was a certain comfort in knowing that she was out of the way--at least, that she was as much out of the way as it was possible for Patricia to be, bound or untrammeled. Jack Masters went abroad, Steve Ventnor actually went to work, and various other swains sought pastures new.

Ross Burnett was best man and, when the ceremony and breakfast were over, saw the happy couple off upon the _Blue Wing_, for their long Southern cruise. They offered him conduct as far as Washington, whither he was bound, but he knew from the look in their eyes that he was not wanted, and with a promise to meet them in New York when they returned, he waved them a good-by from the pier and took up the thread of his Government business where it had been dropped. It is not often that good comes out of villainy, and the memory of the adventure in which Crabb had involved him, often troubled his conscience. What if some day he should meet Baron Arnim or Baron Arnim"s man and be recognized? At the State Department Crowthers had asked him no questions and he had thought it wise not to offer explanations. But certain it was that to that adventure alone was his present prosperity directly due. His South American mission successfully concluded, he had returned to Washington with the a.s.surance that other and even more important work awaited him.

His point of view had changed. All he had needed was initiative, and, Crabb having supplied that deficiency, he had learned to face the world again with the squared shoulders of the man who had at last found himself. The world was his oyster and he would open it how and when he liked.

It was this new att.i.tude perhaps which enabled him to take note of the taming of Mortimer Crabb, for when he visited the bride and groom in their sumptuous house in New York, he discovered that Crabb had formed the habit of the easy-chair after dinner, and that the married life, which all his days he had professed to abhor, was the life for him. It took the combined efforts of Burnett and Patricia to dislodge him.

"He"s absolutely impossible," said Patricia. "He says that he has solved the problem of happiness--that he has done with the world. It"s so like a man," and she stamped her small foot, "to think that marriage is the end of everything when--as everyone knows--it"s only the beginning. He"s getting stout already, and I know, I"m positive that he is going to be bald. Won"t you help me, Mr. Burnett?"

"That"s a dreadful prospect--Bened.i.c.k, the married man. You only need carpet slippers and a cribbage-board, Mort, to make the picture complete. Have you stopped seeking opportunities?"

"Ah, yes," drawled Crabb, "Patty is the only opportunity I ever had--at least--er--the only one worth embracing----"

"Mortimer!"

"And don"t you ever go to the Club?" laughed Ross.

"Oh, no. I"m taboo there since I lived in Philadelphia. Besides, I"m not a bachelor any more, you know. If Patty only wouldn"t insist on dragging me out----"

Patricia laughed.

"Twice, Ross, already this winter," Crabb continued. "It"s cruelty, nothing less." But the perpetrator of the outrage was smiling, and she leaned forward just then and laid her hand in that of her husband, saying with a laugh, "Mort, you know we"ll have to get Ross married at once."

"Me?" said Burnett, in alarm.

"Of course. A bachelor only sneers at a Bened.i.c.k when he has given up hoping----"

"Oh, I say now--I"m not so old."

"Then you do hope?"

"Oh, no, I only wait--for a miracle."

"This isn"t the age of miracles," remarked Patty thoughtfully, "at least not miracles of that kind. How can you expect anyone to fall in love with you if you go on leaping from one end of the earth to the other. No girl wants to marry a kangaroo--even a diplomatic kangaroo." She paused and examined him with her head on one side. "And yet you know you"re pa.s.sably decent looking----"

"Oh, thanks!"

"Even distinguished--that foreign way of wearing your mustache is really quite fetching. You"ll do, I think, with some coaching."

"Will you coach me?"

"I object," interrupted Crabb, lazily.

"I will. You"re quite worth marrying--I"m at least sure you wouldn"t condemn your wife to her own lares and penates."

"Not I. She"d get the wanderl.u.s.t--or a divorce."