II + 

Leora wrote that she had been dropped from the school of nursing for over-absence and for being married. She suspected that it was her father who had informed the hospital authorities. Then, it appeared, she had secretly sent for a shorthand book and, on pretense of helping Bert, she was using the typewriter in the bank, hoping that by next autumn she could join Martin and earn her own living as a stenographer. + 

Once he offered to give up medicine, to take what work he could find and send for her. She refused. + 

Though in his service to Leora and to the new god, Dean Silva, he had become austere, denying himself whisky, learning page on page of medicine with a frozen fury, he was always in a vacuum of desire for her, and always he ran the last block to his boardinghouse, looking for a letter from her. Suddenly he had a plan. He had tasted shame⁠—this one last shame would not matter. He would flee to her in Easter vacation; he would compel Tozer to support her while she studied stenography in Zenith; he would have her near him through the last year. He paid Clif the borrowed hundred, when the bimonthly check came from Elk Mills, and calculated his finances to the penny. By not buying the suit he distressingly needed, he could manage it. Then for a month and more he had but two meals a day, and of those meals one was bread and butter and coffee. He washed his own linen in the bathtub and, except for occasional fiercely delightful yieldings, he did not smoke. + 

His return to Wheatsylvania was like his first flight, except that he talked less with fellow tramps, and all the way, between uneasy naps in the red-plush seats of coaches, he studied the bulky books of gynecology and internal medicine. He had written certain instructions to Leora. He met her on the edge of Wheatsylvania and they had a moment’s talk, a resolute kiss. + 

News spreads not slowly in Wheatsylvania. There is a certain interest in other people’s affairs, and the eyes of citizens of whose existence Martin did not know had followed him from his arrival. When the culprits reached the bone-littered castle of the Tozer ogres, Leora’s father and brother were already there, and raging. Old Andrew Jackson cried out upon them. He said that conceivably it may not have been insane in Martin to have “run away from school once, but to go and sneak back this second time was absolutely plumb crazy.” Through his tirade, Martin and Leora smiled confidently. + 

From Bert, “By God, sir, this is too much!” Bert had been reading fiction. “I object to the use of profanity, but when you come and annoy My Sister a second time, all I can say is, by God, sir, this is too blame much!” + 

Martin looked meditatively out of the widow. He noticed three people strolling the muddy street. They all viewed the Tozer house with hopeful interest. Then he spoke steadily: + 

“Mr. Tozer, I’ve been working hard. Everything has gone fine. But I’ve decided I don’t care to live without my wife. I’ve come to take her back. Legally, you can’t prevent me. I’ll admit, without any argument, I can’t support her yet, if I stay in the University. She’s going to study stenography. She’ll be supporting herself in a few months, and meanwhile I expect you to be decent enough to send her money.” + 

“This is too much,” said Tozer, and Bert carried it on: “Fellow not only practically ruins a girl but comes and demands that we support her for him!” + 

“All right. Just as you want. In the long run it’ll be better for her and for me and for you if I finish medic school and have my profession, but if you won’t take care of her, I’ll chuck school, I’ll go to work. Oh, I’ll support her, all right! Only you’ll never see her again. If you go on being idiots, she and I will leave here on the night train for the Coast, and that’ll be the end.” For the first time in his centuries of debate with the Tozers, he was melodramatic. He shook his fist under Bert’s nose. “And if you try to prevent our going, God help you! And the way this town will laugh at you!⁠ ⁠… How about it, Leora? Are you ready to go away with me⁠—forever?” + 

“Yes,” she said. + 

They discussed it, greatly. Tozer and Bert struck attitudes of defense. They couldn’t, they said, be bullied by anybody. Also, Martin was an Adventurer, and how did Leora know he wasn’t planning to live on the money they sent her? In the end they crawled. They decided that this new, mature Martin, this new, hard-eyed Leora were ready to throw away everything for each other. + 

Mr. Tozer whined a good deal, and promised to send her seventy dollars a month till she should be prepared for office-work. + 

At the Wheatsylvania station, looking from the train window, Martin realized that this anxious-eyed, lip-puckering Andrew Jackson Tozer did love his daughter, did mourn her going. + 