id he with a voice of some constraint, and looked at
me fixedly. "Georgy was here," he observed presently.

"Yes."

"She did you good."

"I don't know," I returned with an effort at indifference: "she may have
roused me a little."

He started up, and began to pace the floor with a flurried air quite
unusual with him, now and then stopping abruptly and seeming to bend all
his energies to the arrangement of a book or mantel-ornament, as if
their displacement caused him annoyance--conduct so unlike his ordinary
phlegmatic demeanor that I suspected him of extreme embarrassment.

"Speak out, old fellow!" said I briefly. "What's the use of all this
hesitation?"

He turned squarely round and faced me, yet did not meet my eyes, but
looked over and beyond me. I have never forgotten his face as I saw it
then: the heavy features were all fixed in sombre lines; his eyes were
like my dog Carlo's, full of honesty and patience, but I knew that he
was suffering.

"I am older than you, Floyd--" he began.

I assented: "Yes, three years older."

"Old enough," he pursued, "to have thought a good deal about the time
when I shall be an independent man. As soon as I am through college I am
to take the pistol- and rifle-factories off my father's hands. The
papers are already made out, and will be signed on my twenty-first
birthday; so from that time I shall have an income which will entitle me
to marry and settle as early as I please."

I gazed at him in profound surprise.

"You are only fifteen," he went on. "I dare say you have not thought of
marrying anybody yet."

"No indeed!" I burst out petulantly.

"I have," said he dropping his eyes. "I am older, you know, and I have
thought a good deal about it. It has seemed to me for a long time now
that but one thing could possibly happen--that I shall marry Georgy as
soon as I leave college. Her mother will let her marry no one but a man
rich enough to make her life pleasant in the world: my secure prospects
seem to justify my reliance on my chances of winning her."

"I knew you liked her," I muttered hoarsely. His words and manner
overwhelmed me with wonder.

"Yes," he went on, his dull voice gaining softer modulations, "I love
her with all my heart. You know I do: there can be no use in concealing
it. I think of nothing for myself: 'tis all for her. She--" He broke
off, growing furiously red and shamefaced, then recovered his
self-composure. "But notwithstanding all this," sa