her proud and perfect upper lip, Laurie
felt his heart-beats quicken. She was a wonder, this girl; and with his
delight in her beauty and her pride came another feeling, almost as new
as his humility--an overwhelming sympathy for and a desire to help
another.

These sentiments served as needed balance to his spirits, which, as
always, mounted dangerously when he was interested. He held himself down
with difficulty.

This was no time for the nonsense that he loved to talk. One doesn't
rescue a lady from suicide and then try to divert her mind with innocent
prattle. One gives her a decent time to pull herself together, and then,
with tact and sympathy, one gets to the roots of her trouble, if one
can, and helps to destroy them. Despite his limited experience with
drama off the stage, Laurie knew this. Because he was very young and
very much in earnest, and was talking to a young thing like himself,
though in that hour she seemed so much older, he instinctively found the
right way to approach the roots.

They had finished breakfast, and he had asked and received permission to
smoke. When he had lighted his cigarette and exhaled his first
satisfying puff of smoke, not in rings this time, he took the cigarette
from his mouth, and with his eyes on its blazing end expressed his
thought with stark simplicity.

"When we were over in your studio," he said, "I admitted that twice in
my life I had tried to--make away with myself. Only two other persons in
the world know that, but I'd like to tell you about it, if you don't
mind."

She looked at him. There were strange things in the look, things that
thrilled him, and other things he subconsciously resented, without
understanding why. When she spoke there was a more personal note in her
voice than it had yet held.

"You?" she asked; and she added almost lightly, "That seems absurd."

"I know."

Laurie spoke with the new humility he had found only to-day.

"You think that because I'm so young I couldn't have been desperate
enough for that. But--you're young, too."

He was looking straight at her as he spoke. Her eyes, a little hard and
challenging, softened, then dropped.

"That's different," she muttered.

He nodded.

"I know the causes were different enough," he agreed. "But the feeling
back of them, that pushes one up against such a proposition, must be
pretty much the same sort of thing. Anyway, it makes me understand; and
I consider that it gives me a claim on