ferently about it later. Let's get some fresh
air and see what the shops have to offer."

A pause, then she, timidly: "Would you mind very much if I--if I
didn't--go on?"

"You mean, if you left me?"

She nodded without looking at him. He could not understand himself, but
as he sat observing her, so young, so inexperienced and so undesirable,
a pity of which he would not have dreamed his nature capable welled up
in him, choking his throat with sobs he could scarcely restrain and
filling his eyes with tears he had secretly to wipe away. And he felt
himself seized of a sense of responsibility for her as strong in its
solemn, still way as any of the paroxysms of his passion had been.

He said: "My dear--you mustn't decide anything so important to you in a
hurry."

A tremor passed over her, and he thought she was going to dissolve in
hysterics. But she exhibited once more that marvelous and mysterious
self-control, whose secret had interested and baffled him. She said in
her dim, quiet way:

"It seems to me I just can't stay on."

"You can always go, you know. Why not try it a few days?"

He could feel the trend of her thoughts, and in the way things often
amuse us without in the least moving us to wish to laugh, he was amused
by noting that she was trying to bring herself to stay on, out of
consideration for _his_ feelings! He said with a kind of paternal
tenderness:

"Whenever you want to go, I am willing to arrange things for you--so
that you needn't worry about money. But I feel that, as I am older than
you, I ought to do all I can to keep you from making a mistake you might
soon regret."

She studied him dubiously. He saw that she--naturally enough--did not
believe in his disinterestedness, that she hadn't a suspicion of his
change, or, rather collapse, of feeling. She said:

"If you ask it, I'll stay a while. But you must promise to--to be kind
to me."

There was only gentleness in his smile. But what a depth of satirical
self-mockery and amusement at her innocent young egotism it concealed!
"You'll never have reason to speak of that again, my dear," said he.

"I--can--trust you?" she said.

"Absolutely," replied he. "I'll have another room opened into this
suite. Would you like that?"

"If you--if you don't mind."

He stood up with sudden boyish buoyance. "Now--let's go shopping. Let's
amuse ourselves."

She rose with alacrity. She eyed him uncertainly, then flung her arms
round his neck and k