pat.

"Well, it's over," she said, "and I wanted you to know. I'm going to
pull back in my shell and be very dignified and honorable. If anybody
wants to get hurt through me, they've got to hurt themselves."

"You'll not try to see West any more?"

"No," she said rather wearily, "that's over. And it's for the best. I've
had a good lesson. No man ought ever to take me seriously until I've
told him every day for a year that I love him. Maybe two years."

"Just tell me _once_--" he began

"Don't," she said, "please. Now you confess."

"Well, Barbs," he said, "this week-end is a sort of good-by. I'm in very
deep, and I'm going to a new place to live a new life."

"Well!" she exclaimed, "you're not running away?"

"Only from temptation," he said. "I have spoken to all my creditors but
one, and they have behaved decently and kindly. Wherever I go I take my
obligations with me, and, God willing, they shall all be paid."

"Oh," she said, "I think a man ought to make good in the midst of his
temptations."

"Might just as well say that you ought to finish your bust of Blizzard
with one hand tied behind your back, since it's a constant temptation to
you to use both. You ought also to be blindfolded and to work in the
dark, since you are constantly tempted to look at your model and see
what you are doing."

"I shall miss you," she said simply, "like everything. Why--"

"Why what?"

"It fills the future with blanks that can't be filled in."

"That may or may not be, Barbs. If they can't be filled in, you will
write to me, and I will come back."

"But I don't mean--"

"I don't believe you know what you mean. But you aren't Barbs now; you
are my confessor. I confess to you, then, that I am in pretty much the
same boat with Harry West. I am going away, partly, to get over you--if
I can. Love is a fire. Feed it, and it grows. Let it alone, and it dies.
Confessor, there is a certain girl--one Barbara Ferris, I love her with
all my heart and soul and have so done for many years. Since this leads
to happiness for neither of us, I am going to cut her out of my life."

"Wilmot! Are you speaking seriously? You're not going to write to me?
I'll have no news of you? Not know how you are getting on? Not know if
you are sick or well?"

"The first night," said Wilmot, "you cried. The second you slept and
thought about work."

"But you are my oldest friend and my best. Whatever we are to each
other, we are that--best friends