her face
reminded me forcibly of the suffering she had undergone. I hastened to
change the subject.

"Sometime I hope to show you London and my studio under different
circumstances," I said. "I've got a lot of interesting old things there
that I've picked up. You must surely come."

"Oh, I should love to. And your pictures! You must show me those, too."

"I'll be glad to. We will get up a party, some time. I've lots of
delightful friends among the painters and musical people. You'd like
them, I know."

"It's the life I've always dreamed of," she said, her cheeks flushing
with excitement. "I've been to so many places, Rome and Paris, and
Vienna and Cairo, and the East, you know, but I really know very little
about them. The outside I have seen, of course, but the real life--that
I have missed. And now we are stuck down here, where we don't know
anybody, because father fancies it is good for his health. I suppose it
is, but it isn't real, joyous living. I hardly feel alive."

"But you go to London, don't you? Your father spoke of his house there."

"Oh, yes, we are there a great deal, but father's friends are mostly
professors of Assyriology and Egyptology, and people of that sort, and
they come and stay for hours and talk about scarabs and hieroglyphics
and mummies, and all that sort of thing. Sometimes I feel almost as
though I were about to become a mummy myself."

She certainly did not look it, with her wonderful color, heightened by
the firelight and her large and brilliant eyes. I could not help looking
deep into them as I replied.

"We must prevent that, at all costs. Let me show you what it is to
really live."

"Isn't that rather a large order? And we have known each other for so
short a time, too." She laughed nervously, but did not seem displeased
at my remark.

"I think the experiences of the past week have caused us to know each
other very well," I said, gravely, "and I hope you may think as much of
the friendship which has come to us as I do."

"Are we then really friends?" she said slowly. "I never had a man
friend--nor very many of any sort, I fear. We have always moved about so
much from place to place."

I regretted my choice of words. I could readily believe that she would
not find it easy to have a man friend, for he would at once proceed to
fall head over heels in love with her, as I had done. "Perhaps not
friends," I said, and, as I did so, I placed my hand over hers, which
lay beside