old job I could and then studying what time was left."

"And growing stronger every day--feeling your increasing power!"

"And my hunger, too, sometimes."

He tried to make light of it because he didn't wish her to become so
serious over it. He did n't like playing the part of hero.

"You did n't have enough to eat?" she asked in astonishment.

"You should have seen me watch Barstow's cake-box."

He told her the story, making it as humorous as he could. But when he
had finished, she wasn't laughing. For a moment his impulse was to lay
before her the whole story--the bitter climax, the ashen climax, which
lately he had thought so beautiful. She had said that nothing in the
past would matter--but this was of the future, too. Even if she ought
to know, he had no right to force upon her the burden of what was to
come. He found now that he had even cut himself off from the privilege
of being utterly honest with her. To tell her the whole truth might be
to destroy his usefulness to her. She might then scorn his help. He
must not allow that. Nothing could justify that.

"You are looking very serious," she commented.

Her own face had in the meanwhile grown brighter.

"It is all from within," he answered, "all from within. And--now
presto!--it is gone."

Truly the problem did seem to vanish as he allowed himself to become
conscious of the picture she made there in the sunshine. With her hair
down her back she could have worn short dresses and passed for sixteen.
The smooth white forehead, the exquisite velvet skin with the first
bloom still upon it, the fragile pink ears were all of unfolding
womanhood.

"Since my mother died," he said, "you are the first woman who has ever
made me serious."

"Have you been such a recluse then?"

"Not from principle. I have been a sort of office hermit by necessity."

"You should not have allowed an office to imprison you," she scolded.
"You should have gone out more."

"I have--lately."

"And has it not done you good?" she challenged, not realizing his
narrow application of the statement.

"A world of good."

"It brightens one up."

"Wonderfully."

"If we stay too much by ourselves we get selfish, don't we?"

"Intensely. And narrow-minded, and morbid, and petty and--," the words
came charged with bitterness, "and intensely foolish."

"I 'm glad you crawled out before you became all those things."

"You gave me a hand or I should n't."

"I gave you