or the first time in
English and showing already a greater ease in its use. "He vill not be
late. I haf not know him to remain so long as this, since I am here."

Noel smiled to hear her, but shook his head.

"No," he answered, "I must go now, but first I want to get you to give
me a promise." He put out his hand as he spoke, and she placed hers in
it with the confidence of a child.

"You are in a strange land," he said, "but I don't want you to feel
that you are altogether among strangers. You may have some need of
friends--trouble or sickness or some of the things that are always
happening in this sad world, may come to you. I trust not. I hope to God
they may let you go by, but we can never tell what will come to us, and
I want you to promise me that if you are ever in need of a friend you
will write to me. Your husband may be ill, or something like that," he
added hurriedly, fearing he had ventured too far, though she showed no
sign of thinking so. "And if it is a thing in which you want a woman's
help, I have sisters and a mother and they shall come to you. Will you
promise me this?"

"I vill. Oh, I vill promise truly," she said. "But vill you not come
more?"

"Oh, perhaps so, now and then," he said hurriedly. He could not tell her
he had resolved not to, but that was the fixed determination which had
been the result of this evening's experiences. He saw her needs of help
and tenderness so clearly and he longed so to answer them that the very
intensity of that longing was a warning to him. If he had been a younger
man, or she an older woman, he might not have come to this hard
resolution, but he was experienced enough to know that there was danger
in such a companionship as he was tempted to enter into. If she had been
older and better acquainted with the world that also might have made a
difference, but it would have been exactly the same thing as taking
advantage of the unknowingness of a child. Then again, in the third
place, if her husband had been careful of her, or even suspicious and
jealous, he might have thought it some one's else affair than his, and
allowed himself the delight of this acquaintanceship, guarding and
loving her like a brother, but none of these supposititious cases was
so. The matter as it stood threw the whole responsibility upon him, and,
as a man of honor, he could see but one course open to him.

So he stood and held her by the hand with a feeling that she was his
little sister,