“Well, the only one left in town.”

Raymond gave a little laugh and changed the subject.  He had no intention of getting behind his companion’s screen.  With a wider conception of his path, he more diligently kept to the middle.

After the first fortnight he even went so far as to arrange for business engagements, now and then, in order to keep his brain clear.

Joan always met these empty spaces in her days with a keen sense of loss which she hid completely from Raymond.

His business demands were offset by her skilfully timed escapes from the Brier Bush.  She would either be too early or too late for Raymond, and so while he paid homage to his code, Joan appeared to make the code unnecessary.

And the weather became hotter and moister and the moral and physical fibre of the city-bound became limper.

After a week of not seeing each other Joan and Raymond made up for lost time by galloping instead of trotting along.

“Stevenson and O. Henry couldn’t beat this adventure of ours,” Raymond exclaimed one evening, wiping the moisture from his forehead.  “And I bet thousands of folks would think better of one another if——­”

“If—­they had the line in their hands,” Joan broke in; “but they haven’t, you know!”

“Exactly.”

Just then Raymond made a bad break.  He asked Joan if she did not trust him well enough to give him her telephone number.

“Something might occur,” he said, “business pops up unexpectedly.  I hate to lose a chance of seeing you—­and I hate to wait on street corners.”

“I am sorry,” Joan replied, “but that would spoil everything.”

Raymond flushed.  It was just such plunges as this that made him recoil.

“I understand,” he replied, coolly; “I had hoped that you could trust me.”

“It is not a matter of trust.  It’s keeping to the bargain.”

There was nothing more to say.  But, quite naturally, several days elapsed before they saw each other again.

Fierce, broiling days without even the debilitating moisture to ease the suffering citizens.

Joan, alone in the dark, hot studio, thought of Doris and Nancy and wondered!

“Of course, what I am doing would be horrid if I didn’t know all about him,” and then Joan tossed about.  “Some day—­it will be such a lark to tell them—­and think of his surprise when he—­knows!  I’ll see him with all barriers down next winter,” for at this time Joan had written and accepted all Doris’s plans for her.  She was to study music determinedly—­she had a proud little bank account—­and she would live at the old house and revel in Nancy’s social triumphs.

And Raymond, in his shrouded house, had his restless hours and with greater reason, for he was playing utterly in the dark and had to acknowledge to his grim, off-standing self that, except for the fact that he was in the dark, he would not dare play the very amusing game he was playing.