a man's whole devotion, she would be content to
share him with the submerged, with the besmirched and befouled of the
earth. And at last he was speaking.

"Many's the bold boon I've begged, but never the like of this," he said,
his gray eyes holding hers, "but _never_ the like of this! Would
you--_could_ you--be dining with a dope fiend?"

It seemed a long time to Jane before she worked her hands free of his
clasp and heard her voice, "I--don't believe I understand----"

"Why would you, indeed?" he cried, penitently. "Let you sit down till I'm
telling you."

She seated herself in her straight desk chair, and--"Dining with a dope
fiend," she heard herself saying. "It sounds rather like a line from a
comic song, doesn't it?"

"A lad he is, just," said Daragh, earnestly. "It got hold of him after a
sickness in the smooth devil's way it has. Six months, now, I'm toiling
with him. Times I have him on his feet, times he's destroyed again. 'Twas
a terrible pity I had to be leaving him the while I was home in Ireland.
Well, I found him doing rare and fine, God love him, back at his drawing
again in the scrap of a studio I found for him, but a pitiful tangle of
nerves and fancies. What he needs now is a friend--his own sort--some one
that speaks his own tongue. He thinks the decent world will have none of
him,--a weak, pitiful thing isn't worth the saving. Fair perished with
the lonesomeness, he is. 'I used to know women,' he was telling me,
'pretty women, clever ones; I miss them--the sound of their voices and
the look of their white hands and their making tea, and the light, gay
talk we'd be having!' Then he sat, limp, with the grit gone out of him.
'Not one of them would come near me, now,' he said. 'Holding their skirts
away from me, passing by on the other side.' And then--may the devil fly
away with my tongue, Jane Vail--I heard myself saying, 'There's one won't
be doing that, lad! There's one, the best and fairest and cleverest of
them all, the wonder-worker of the world,' I said, 'will be putting on
her gayest gear and be coming here to make tea-talk with you, the way
you'll think the month of June itself is happened in your studio!'" He
stopped, looking down at her with anxious eyes.

Jane took her own time about looking at him, and when she did it was
almost as if she had never seen him before. He was still wearing his
winter suit, this soft spring weather, and it wanted pressing and his
boots were far from new.