“I shouldn’t be able to forgive you if you didn’t come,” said I. Up and down the little room, up and down, the two of us.

Came a light tap at the door.  The Butterfly Man’s head followed it.

“Didn’t I hear Laurence talking?” asked he, smiling.  The smile froze at sight of the boy’s face.  He closed the door, and leaned against it.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked, quickly.  It did not occur to us to question his right to ask, or to wonder how he knew.

In a dull voice Laurence told him.  He held out his hand for the note, read it in silence, and handed it back.

“What do you make of it?” I asked.

“Trouble,” said he, curtly; and he asked, reproachfully, “Don’t you know her, both of you, by this time?”

“I know,” said Laurence, “that she has sent me away from her.”

“Because she wants to, or because she thinks she has to?” asked John Flint.

“Why should she do so unless it pleased her?” I asked sorrowfully.

His eyes flashed.  “Why, she’s herself! A girl like her couldn’t play anybody false because there’s no falseness in her to do it with.  What are you going to do about it?”

“There is nothing to do,” said Laurence, “but to release her; a gentleman can do no less.”

John Flint’s lips curled.  “Release her?  I’d hang on till hell froze over and caught me in the ice!  I’d wait.  I’d write and tell her she didn’t need to make herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough about her for the two of us, because she didn’t trust me enough to tell me what her trouble was, so I could help her.  That first and always I was her friend, right here, whenever she needed me and whatever she needed me for.  And I’d stand by.  What else is a man good for?”

“I believe,” said I, “that John Flint has given you the right word, Laurence.  Just hold fast and be faithful.”

Laurence lifted his haggard face.  “There isn’t any question of my being faithful to her, Padre.  And I couldn’t make myself believe that she’s less so than I. What Flint says tallies with my own intuition.  I’ll write her to-night.”  He laid his hand on John Flint’s arm.  “You’re all right, Bughunter,” said he, earnestly. “’Night, Padre.”  Then he was gone.

“Do you think,” said John Flint, when he had rejected every conjecture his mind presented as the possible cause of Mary Virginia’s action, “that Inglesby could be at the bottom of this?”

“I think,” said I, “that you have an obsession where that man is concerned.  He is a disease with you.  Good heaven, what could Inglesby possibly have to do with Mary Virginia’s affairs?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.  Well, then, who is it?”

“Perhaps,” said I, unwillingly, “it is Mary Virginia herself.”

“Forget it!  She’s not that sort.”

“She is a woman.”

“Ain’t it the truth, though?” he jeered.  “What a peach of a reason for not acting like herself, looking like herself, being like herself!  She’s a woman!  So are all the rest of the folks that weren’t born men, if you’ll notice.  They’re women; we’re men:  and both of us are people.  Get it?”