he bent more closely over her work, and spoke
without looking up.

"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."

"That's easy to say."

"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued
to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd
go to the Argentine."

"Why not say the moon?"

"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."

"So is the Argentine--for me."

"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."

"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."

"Some of them were probably in worse."

There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while
Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.

"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.

"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the
country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little
girl I was speaking of just now--whom I'm so fond of--was born there. Her
father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."

He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound,
just above his breath.

"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's
Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard
that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many--stranded people."

"I should be just his sort, then."

His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible
subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless
darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions
of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the
law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In
her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded
him of something he had read--or heard--of the wild olive being grafted
into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course
of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He
was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself
might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her
name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have
chosen for a heroine--Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them
seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan
possibly--or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts