ed. "I'd much
rather stay in Paris, but," he added with a faint smile, "it's a
question of money, and that is not to be despised. Yet I--I--somehow
feel that I am deserting you,--leaving you here all alone in Paris."

"I've been all alone for four years," she said, with a bitterness she
had never felt before, "and I suppose I'm accustomed to it."

Nevertheless she leaned a little forward, with her fawn-colored lashes
dropped over her eyes, which were bent upon the ground and the point
of the parasol she was holding with her little gloved hands between her
knees. He wondered why she did not look up; he did not know that it
was partly because there were tears in her eyes and partly for another
reason. As she had leaned forward his arm had quite unconsciously moved
along the back of the bench where her shoulders had rested, and she
could not have resumed her position except in his half embrace.

He had not thought of it. He was lost in a greater abstraction. That
infinite tenderness,--far above a woman's,--the tenderness of strength
and manliness towards weakness and delicacy, the tenderness that looks
down and not up, was already possessing him. An instinct of protection
drew him nearer this bowed but charming figure, and if he then noticed
that the shoulders were pretty, and the curves of the slim waist
symmetrical, it was rather with a feeling of timidity and a
half-consciousness of unchivalrous thought. Yet why should he not try to
keep the brave and honest girl near him always? Why should he not claim
the right to protect her? Why should they not--they who were alone in a
strange land--join their two lonely lives for mutual help and happiness?

A sudden perception of delicacy, the thought that he should have
spoken before her failure at the Conservatoire had made her feel her
helplessness, brought a slight color to his cheek. Would it not seem
to her that he was taking an unfair advantage of her misfortune? Yet
it would be so easy now to slip a loving arm around her waist, while he
could work for her and protect her with the other. THE OTHER! His eye
fell on his empty sleeve. Ah, he had forgotten that! He had but ONE arm!

He rose up abruptly,--so abruptly that Helen, rising too, almost touched
the arm that was hurriedly withdrawn. Yet in that accidental contact,
which sent a vague tremor through the young girl's frame, there was
still time for him to have spoken. But he only said:--

"Perhaps we had better dine.