When Maggie drove away with Dick from Cedar Crest--this was an hour before Gavegan descended out of the blue upon Larry and two hours before he rode triumphantly away with his captive--she was the most dazed and disillusioned young creature who had ever set out confidently to conquer the world.

Courage, confidence, quickness of wit, all the qualities on which she had prided herself, were now entirely gone, and she was just a white, limp figure that wanted to run away: a weak figure in which swirled thoughts almost too spasmodically powerful for so weakened a vessel not to be shattered under their wild strain: thoughts of her amazingly discovered real father--of how she was the very contradiction of her father's dream--of Larry--of the cunning Jimmie Carlisle whom till this day she had believed her father--of Barney Palmer.
So agitated was she with these gyrating thoughts that she was not conscious that Dick had stopped the car on the green roadside until he had taken her hand and had begun to speak.

The happy, garrulous, unobservant Dick had not noticed anything out of the way with her more than a pallor which she had explained away as being due to nothing more than a bit of temporary dizziness.

And so for the second time Dick now poured out his love to her and asked her to marry him.
"Don't, Dick--please!" she interrupted him.

"I can't marry you! Never!" "What!" cried the astounded Dick.