e all he says," he added with a laugh. "Cecil has
a way--I'm not knocking him, you understand--but a young--inexperienced
girl--might take him a little bit too seriously.... Of course your sister
wouldn't."

"No, I don't think so.... Are _you_ that way, too?"

He raised his eyes: "Do you think I am, Athalie?"

"No.... But I can't help wondering--a little uneasily at times--how
you can find me as--as companionable as you say you do.... I can't
help wondering how long it will last."

"It will last as long as you do."

"But you are sure to find me out sooner or later, Clive."

"Find you out?"

"Yes--discover my limits, exhaust my capacity for entertaining you,
extract the last atom of amusement out of me. And--what _then_?"

"Athalie! What nonsense!"

"Is it?"

"Certainly it's nonsense. How can I possibly tire of such a girl as
you? I scarcely even know you yet. I don't begin to know you. Why you
are a perfectly unexplored, undiscovered girl to me, yet!"

"Am I?" she asked, laughing. "I supposed you had discovered about all
there is to me."

He shook his head, looking at her curiously perplexed: "Every time we
meet you are different. You always have interesting views on any
subject. You stimulate my imagination. How could I tire?

"Besides, somehow I am always aware of reserved and hidden forces in
you--of a character which I only partly know and admire--capabilities,
capacities of which I am ignorant except that, intuitively, I seem to
know they are part of you."

"Am I as complex as that to you?"

"Sometimes," he admitted. "You are just now for example. But usually
you are only a wonderfully interesting and charming girl who brings
out the best side of me and keeps me amused and happy every moment
that I am with you."

"There really is not much more to me than that," she said in a low
voice. "You sum me up--a gay source of amusement: nothing more."

"Athalie, you know you are more vital than that to me."

"No, I don't know it."

"You do! You know it in your own heart. You know that it is a
straight, clean, ardent friendship that inspires me and--" she looked
up, serious, and very quiet.

--"You know," he continued impulsively, "that it is not only your
beauty, your loveliness and grace and that inexplicable charm you seem
to radiate, that brings me to seek you every time that I have a moment
to do so.

"Why, if it were that alone, it would all have been merely a matter of
sentiment. Have I ev