riding with any of those boys--day or night--if I meet you, and
tell you all about my experience in the war? I'll do my best to keep
the time you spend with me from being tedious."

"It's another bargain," she returned deliberately, "if you just don't
spend enough time with me to make me stuck on you--then throw me down.
On the level, now, Daren?"

"I'll meet you as often as you want. And I'll be your friend as long
as you prove to me I can be of any help, or pleasure, or good to you."

"Hot dog, but you're taking some job, Daren. Won't it be just spiffy?
We'll meet here, afternoons, and evenings when mother's out. She's
nutty on bridge. She makes me promise I won't leave the yard. So I'll
not have to lie to meet you.... Daren, that day at Helen's, the minute
I saw you I knew you were going to have something to do with my
future."

"Bessy, a little while ago I made sure you had no romance in you,"
replied Lane, with a smile. "Now as we've gotten serious, let's think
hard about the future. What do you want most? Do you care for study,
for books? Have you any gift for music? Do you ever think of fitting
yourself for useful work?... Or is your mind full of this jazz stuff?
Do you just want to go from day to day, like a butterfly from flower
to flower? Just this boy and that one--not caring much which--all this
frivolity you hinted of, and worse, living this precious time of your
youth all for excitement? What is it you want most?"

She responded with a thoughtfulness that inspired Lane's hope for her.
This girl could be reached. She was like Lorna in many ways, but
different in mentality. Bessy watched the gyrations of her shapely
little foot. She could not keep still even in abstraction.

"A girl _must_ have a good time," she replied presently. "I've done
things I hated because I couldn't bear to be left out of the fun....
But I like most to read and dream. Music makes me strange inside, and
to want to do great things. Only there _are_ no great things to do.
I've never been nutty about a career, like Helen is. And I always
hated work.... I guess--to tell on the level--what I want most is to
be loved."

With that she raised her eyes to Lane's. He tried to read her mind,
and realized that if he failed it was not because she was not baring
it. Dropping his own gaze, he pondered. The girl's response to his
earnestness was intensely thought-provoking. No matter how immodestly
she was dressed, or what she had confessed