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He clicked off his light and very carefully opened his door. Mary was in the lower hall, the heavy gray cat hugged up in her arms. She wore a lace boudoir cap, and a pale blue dressing-gown trail 9L0-827 Exam ed after her. Seen thus, she was exquisitely feminine. Faintly through his consciousness flitted Porter Bigelow's name for her--Contrary Mary. Why Contrary? Was there another side which he had not seen? He had heard her flaming words to Barry, "If I were a man--I'd make the world move----" and he had been for the moment repelled. He had no sympathy with modern feminine rebellions. Women were women. Men were men. The things which they had in common were love, and that which followed, the home, the family. Beyond these things their lives were divided, necessarily, properly.

He groped his way back through the darkness to the tower window, opened it and leaned out. The rain beat upon his face, the wind blew his hair back, and fluttered the ends of his loose tie. Below him lay the storm-swept city, its lights faint and flickering. He remembered a test which he had chosen on a night like this.

"O Lord, Thou art my God. I will exalt Thee, I will praise Thy name, for Thou hast done wonderful things; Thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in distress . . . a refuge from the storm----"

How the words came 9L0-827 Braindump back to him, out of that vivid past. But to-night--why, there was no--God! Was he the fool who had once seen God--in a storm?

He shut the window, and finding a heavy coat and an old cap put them on. Then he made his way, softly, down the tower steps to the side door. Mary had pointed out to him that this entrance would make it possible for him to go and come as he pleased. To-night it pleased him to walk in the beating rain.

Mary, listening to Porter's pleasant voice, was constrained to admit that he could be charming. As for the freckles and "carrot-head," they had been succeeded by a fine if somewhat florid complexion, and the curled thickness of his brilliant crown gave to his head an almost classic beauty.

As 9L0-624 she studied him, his eyes met hers, and he surprised her by a quick smile of understanding.

"Oh, Contrary Mary," he murmured, so that the rest could not hear, "what do you think of me?"

She found herself blushing, "_Porter._"

"You were weighing me in the balance? Red head against my lovely disposition?"

Before she could answer, he had turned back to Aunt Isabelle, leaving Mary with her cheeks hot.

After supper, the young host insisted that Leila and the General should go home in his limousine with Barry and Aunt Isabelle.

"Mary and I wil 9L0-624 Dump l follow in a taxi," he said in the face of their protests.

"Young man," demanded the twinkling General, "if I accept, will you look upon me in the light of an incumbrance or a benefactor?"

"A benefactor, sir," said Porter, promptly, and that settled it.

"And now," said Porter, as, having seen the rest of the party off, he took his seat beside the slim figure in the green velvet wrap, "now I am going to have it out with you."

"But--Porter!"

"I've a lot t 9L0-624 Exam o say. And we are going to ride around the Speedway while I say it."

"But--it's raining."

"All the better. It will be we two and the world away, Mary."

"And there isn't anything to say."

She flashed a quick glance at him. "I like that," she said in her straightforward way. "It is lovely. Aunt Frances brought it to me last year from Paris. Whenever you see me wear anything that is particularly nice, you'll know that it came from Aunt Frances--Aunt Isabelle's sister. She's the 9L0-062 Exam rich member of the family. And all the rest of us are as poor as poverty."

Outside a motor horn brayed. Then Porter Bigelow came in--a perfectly put together young man, groomed, tailored, outfitted according to the mode.

"Are you ready, Contrary Mary?" he said, then saw Roger and stopped.

Porter was a gentleman, so his manner to Roger Poole showed no hint of what he thought of lodgers in general, and this one in particular. He shook hands and said a few pleasant and perfunctory 9L0-062 things. Personally he thought the man looked down and out. But no one could tell what Mary might think. Mary's standards were those of the dreamer and the star gazer. What she was seeking she would never find in a Mere Man. The danger lay however, in the fact that she might mistakenly hang her affections about the neck of some earth-bound Object and call it an Ideal.

As for himself, in spite of his Buff-Orpington crest, and his cock-o'-the-walk manner, Porter was, as far Mary was concerned, saturated with humility. He knew that his money, his family's social eminen 9L0-623 ce were as nothing in her eyes. If underneath the weight of these things Mary could find enough of a man in him to love that could be his only hope. And that hope had held him for years to certain rather sedate ambitions, and had given him moral standards which had delighted his mother and had puzzled his father.