ant informality existing now could not be
continued with anything except very serious disadvantage to you."

"You will grow tired of painting me," she said under her breath.

"No. But your life is all before you, Dulcie. Girls usually marry
sooner or later."

"Men do too."

"That's not what I meant----"

"You will marry," she whispered.

Again, at her words, the same odd uneasiness began to possess him as
though something obscure, unformulated as yet, must some day be
cleared up by him and decided.

"Don't leave me--yet," she said.

"I couldn't take you with me to France."

"Let me enlist for service. Could you be patient for a few months so
that I might learn something--anything!--I don't care what, if only I
can go with you? Don't they require women to scrub and do unpleasant
things--humble, unclean, necessary things?"

"You couldn't--with your slender youth and delicate beauty----"

"Oh," she whispered, "you don't know what I could do to be near you!
That is all I want--all I want in the world!--just to be somewhere not
too far away. I couldn't stand it, now, if you left me.... I couldn't
live----"

"Dulcie!"

But, suddenly, it was a hot-faced, passionate, sobbing child who was
clinging desperately to his arm and staunching her tears against
it--saying nothing more, merely clinging close with quivering lips.

"Listen," he said impulsively. "I'll give you time. If there's
anything you can learn that will admit you to France, come back to
town with me and learn it.... Because I don't want to leave you,
either.... There ought to be some way--some way----" He checked
himself abruptly, stared at the bowed head under its torrent of
splendid hair--at the desperate white little hands holding so fast to
his sleeve, at the slender body gathered there in the deep chair, and
all aquiver now.

"We'll go--together," he said unsteadily.... "I'll do what I can; I
promise.... You must go upstairs to bed, now.... Dulcie!... dear
girl...."

She released his arm, tried to get up from her chair obediently,
blinded by tears and groping in the starlight.

"Let me guide you----" His voice was strained, his touch feverish and
unsteady, and the convulsive closing of her fingers over his seemed to
burn to his very bones.

At the stairs she tried to speak, thanking him, asking pardon for her
tears, her loss of self-command, penitent, afraid that she had lowered
herself, strained his friendship--troubled him----

"No.