He caught at that hope.  “But, sweetheart, you’d be—­poor.”

“I’d have you.”

“I couldn’t take you to our old house.  It—­belongs to Mary.  Father knew that Constance was to be married, so he tried to provide for Mary until she married; after that the property will be divided between the two girls.  He felt that I was a man, and he spent what money he had for me on my education.”

“I don’t want to live in Mary’s house.  We could live with Dad.”

“No,” sharply.  Barry had been hurt when the General had seemed to agree so entirely with Gordon.  He had expected the offer of a place in the General’s office, and it had not come.

“If we marry, darling,” he said, “we must go it alone.  I won’t be dependent on any one.”

“We could have a little apartment,” her eyes were shining, “and Dad would furnish it for us, and Susan Jenks could teach me to cook and she could tell me your favorite things, and we’d have them, and it would be like a story book.  Barry, please.”

He, too, thought it would be like a story book.  Other people had done such things and had been happy.  And once at the head of his own household he would show them that he was a man.

Yet he tried to put her away from him.  “I must not.  It wouldn’t be right.”

But as the days went on, and the time before his departure grew short, he began to ask himself, “Why not?”

And it was thus, with Romance in the lead, with Love urging them on, and with Ignorance and Innocence and Impetuosity hand in hand, that, at last, in the madness of a certain March moon, Leila and Barry ran away.

Leila had a friend in Rockville—­an old school friend whom she often visited.  Barry knew Montgomery County from end to end.  He had fished and hunted in its streams, he had motored over its roads, he had danced and dined at its country houses, he had golfed at its country clubs, he had slept at its inns and worshiped in its churches.

So it was to Montgomery County and its county seat that they looked for their Gretna Green, and one night Leila kissed her father wistfully, and told him that she was going to see Elizabeth Dean.

“Just for Saturday, Dad.  I’ll go Friday night, and come back in time for dinner Saturday.”

“Why not motor out?”

“The train will be easier.  And I’ll telephone you when I get there.”

She took chances on the telephoning—­for had he called her up, he would have found that she did not reach Rockville on Friday night, nor was she expected by Elizabeth Dean until Saturday in time for lunch.

There was thus an evening and a night and the morning of the next day in which Little-Lovely Leila was to be lost to the world.

She took the train for Rockville, but stopped at a station half-way between that town and Washington, and there Barry met her.  They had dinner at the little station restaurant—­a wonderful dinner of ham and eggs and boiled potatoes, but the wonderfulness had nothing to do with the food; it had to do rather with Little-Lovely Leila’s shining eyes and blushes, and Barry’s abounding spirits.  He was like a boy out of school.  He teased Leila and wrote poetry on the fly-specked dinner card, reading it out loud to her, reveling in her lovely confusion.