“Go easy, Dad,” warned Lewis.

“I’m going to, Boy,” said Leighton.  “You hear a lot of talk to-day on the shortcomings of marriage as an institution.  The socialists and the suffragists and a lot of other near-sighted people have got it into their heads that we’ve outgrown marriage.”  Leighton puffed at his cigar.  “Once I was invited out to dinner, and had to eat cabbage because there was nothing else.  That night I had the most terrible dream of my life.  I dreamed that instead of growing up, I was growing down, and that by morning I had grown down so far that, when I tried to put them on, I only reached to the crotch of my trousers.  I’ll never forget those flapping, empty legs.”

Lewis smiled.

“You can smile,” went on Leighton.  “I can’t, even now.  That’s what’s happened to this age.  We’ve outgrown marriage downward.  Your near-sighted people talk of contractual agreements, parity of the sexes, and of a lot of other drugged panaceas, with the enthusiasm of a hawker selling tainted bloaters.  They don’t see that marriage is founded on a rock set deeper than the laws of man.  It’s a rock upon which their jerry-rigged ships of the married state are bound to strike as long as there’s any Old Guard left standing above the surge of leveled humanity.”

“And what’s the rock?” asked Lewis.

“A woman’s devotion,” said Leighton, and paused.  “Devotion,” he went on, “is an act of worship, and of prayer as well as of consecration, only, with a woman, it isn’t an act at all.  Sometime perhaps H lne will talk to you.  If she does, you’ll see in her eyes what I’m trying to tell you in words.”

“And—­Folly?” said Lewis.  His own pause astounded him.

“Yes, Folly,” said Leighton.  “Well, that’s what Folly lacks—­the key, the rock, the foundation.  The only person Folly has a right to marry is herself, and she knows it.”

Lewis sighed with disappointment.  He had been so sure.  Leighton spoke again.

“One thing more.  Don’t forget that to-day you and I—­and H lne, received Folly here as one of us.”

Lewis looked up.  Leighton rose, and laid one hand on his shoulder.

“Boy,” he said, “don’t make a mistress out of anything that has touched H lne.  You owe that to me.”

“I won’t, Dad,” gulped Lewis.  He snatched up his hat and stick and hurried out into the open.

CHAPTER XXXIX

LEIGHTON’S heart ached for his boy as he watched him go, and during the next few weeks Iris pity changed into an active anxiety.  In setting that trap—­he could call it nothing else—­for Lew, he and H lne had put forces into conflict that were not amenable to any light control.  Lewis had passed his word.  Leighton knew he would never go back on it.  On the other hand, for the first time in all her life Folly’s primal instinct was being balked by a denial she could comprehend only as having its source in Leighton rather than in Lew.