embled.

"Why, we're just getting acquainted ... I didn't mean for you to go
yet."

She rose, dropping the letters all in a heap.

She was the aggressive one now. She drew me to her quickly, "Stay ...
and I'll promise to be good to you!"

I pushed back, loathing ... loathing her and myself, but myself more,
because in spite of all my disgust, my pulses leaped quick again to
hers.

"Sit down again."

I did not listen, but stood.

"I was thinking that you would stay for supper and then we could go to
some show and after come back here and I would give you a good time."

* * * * *

I staggered out, shocked beyond belief, the last animal flush had died
out of me. All my body was ice-cold.

"Promise me you'll come again this day next week," she called after me
persistently.

She drew the door softly shut and left me reeling down the dark
corridor.

* * * * *

I could hardly speak to my father that night. I avoided him.

* * * * *

At the creeping edge of dawn I woke from a dream with a jerk as I slid
down an endless black abyss. The abyss was my bed's edge and I found
myself on the floor. When I went to rise again, I had to clutch things
to stand up. I was so weak I sat on the bed breathing heavily. I tumbled
backward into bed again and lay in a daze during which dream-objects
mixed with reality and my room walked full of people from all the books
I had read--all to evaporate as my father's face grew, from a cluster of
white foreheads and myriads of eyes, into _him_.

"Johnnie, wake up ... are you sick?"

"Please go away from me and let me alone." I turned my face to the wall
in loathing.

"I'll call a doctor."

* * * * *

The doctor came. He felt my pulse. Put something under my tongue.
Whispered my father in a room, apart. Left.

My father returned, dejected, yet trying to act light and merry.

"What did the doctor say?" I forced myself to ask of him.

"To be frank, Johnnie ... you're old enough to learn the truth ... he
thinks you're taken down with consumption."

"That's what my mother died of."

My father shuddered and put his face down in his hands. I felt a little
sorry for him, then.

"Well you've got to go West now ... and work on a farm ... or
something."

* * * * *

I began to get ready for my trip West. Surely enough, I ha