to encourage him to visit you, to keep him always at arm's length."

"And I," she answered, holding out her hand, "as I hope and mean to
be--as I _am_ your friend--promise that I will have no more to do with
him than the barest courtesy demands. To tell you the truth, your coming
this afternoon was a little inopportune. If you had been a single minute
later, I honestly believe that he would have said unforgivable things."

Wingate's eyes flashed.

"If I could have heard him!" he muttered.

"But, dear friend, you could have said nothing nor done anything," she
reminded him soothingly. "Remember that although we are a little older
friends than many people know of, we still have some distance to go in
understanding."

"I want to be your friend, and I want to be your friend quickly," he
said doggedly.

"No one in the world needs friends as I do," Josephine answered, "because
I do not think that any one is more lonely."

"You have changed," he told her, his eyes full of sympathy.

"Since Etaples? Yes! Somehow or other, I was always able to keep cheerful
there because there was always so much real misery around, and one felt
that one was doing good in the world. Here I seem to be such a useless
person, no good to anybody."

"If you say things like that, I shall forget how far we have to travel,"
he declared. "I need your friendship. I have come over here with rather
a desperate purpose. I think I can say that I have never known fear, and
yet sometimes I flinch when I think of the next few months. I want a real
friend, Lady Dredlinton."

She gave him her hand.

"Josephine, if you please," she said, "and all the friendship you care to
claim. There, see how rapidly we have progressed! You have been here
barely a quarter of an hour and I have given you what really means a
great deal to me."

"I shall prize it," he assured her, "and I shall justify it."

They began to talk of their first meeting, of the doctors and friends
whom they had known together. The time slipped away. It was nearly seven
o'clock when he rose to leave. Even then she seemed loath to let him go.

"What are you doing this evening?" she enquired.

"Nothing," he answered promptly.

"Come back and dine here," she begged. "I warn you, no one is coming, but
I think you had better meet Henry, and, to proceed to the more selfish
part of it all, I rather dread a tete-a-tete dinner this evening. Will
you be very good-natured and come?"

He held her