elp of firelight, pale.

"Why, Dickie, I believe you're going to say No!"

"Some fellows would say Yes," Dickie answered. "But I sort of promised
not to be your friend. Poppa said I'd kind of disgust you. And I figure
that I would--"

Sheila hesitated.

"You mean because you--you--?"

"Yes'm."

"Can't you stop?"

He shook his head and gave her a tormented look.

"Oh, Dickie! Of course you can! At your age!"

"Seems like it means more to me than anything else."

"Dickie! Dickie!"

"Yes'm. It kind of takes the awful edge off things."

"What _do_ you mean? I don't understand."

"Things are so sort of--sharp to me. I mean, I don't know if I can tell
you. I feel like I had to put something between me and--and things. Oh,
damn! I can't make you see--"

"No," said Sheila, distressed.

"It's always that-a-way," Dickie went on. "I mean, everything's kind
of--too much. I used to run miles when I was a kid. And sometimes now
when I can get out and walk or ski, the feeling goes. But other
times--well, ma'am, whiskey sort of takes the edge off and lets something
kind of slack down that gets sort of screwed up. Oh, I don't know ..."

"Did you ever go to a doctor about it?"

Dickie looked up at her and smiled. It was the sweetest smile--so patient
of this misunderstanding of hers. "No, ma'am."

"Then you don't care to be my friend enough to--to try--"

"I wouldn't be a good friend to you," said Dickie. And he spoke now
almost sullenly. "Because I wouldn't want you to have any other friends.
I hate it to see you with any other fellow."

"How absurd!"

"Maybe it is absurd. I guess it seems awful foolish to you." He moved his
cracked patent-leather pump in a sort of pattern on the floor. Again he
looked up, this time with a freakish, an almost elfin flicker of his
extravagant eyelashes. "There's something I could be real well," he said.
"Only, I guess Poppa's got there ahead of me. I could be a dandy guardian
to you--Sheila."

Again Sheila laughed. But the ringing of her silver coins was not quite
true. There was a false note. She shut her eyes involuntarily. She was
remembering that instant an hour or two before when Sylvester's look had
held hers to his will. The thought of what she had promised crushed down
upon her consciousness with the smothering, sudden weight of its reality.
She could not tell Dickie. She could not--though this she did not
admit--bear that he should know.

"Very well," she said, in