r arms round his neck
impulsively. "Don't quite forget me, Paul. It would break my heart.
I've only you left now poor mother's gone."

Paul kissed her and vowed again. He did not vow that he would be a
mother to her, though to the girl's heart it seemed as if he did. The
little girl was aching for a note in his voice that never came. Now,
ninety-nine youths in a hundred who held, at such a sentimental moment,
a comely and not uncared-for maiden in their arms, would have lost
their heads (and their hearts) and vowed in the desired manner. But
Paul was different, and Jane knew it, to her sorrow. He was by no means
temperamentally cold; far from it. But, you see, he lived intensely in
his dream, and only on its outer fringe had Jane her place. In the
heart of it, hidden in amethystine mist, from which only flashed the
diadem on her hair, dwelt the exquisite, the incomparable lady, the
princess who should share his kingdom, while he knelt at her feet and
worshipped her and kissed the rosy tips of her calm fingers. So, as it
never entered his head to kiss the finger tips of poor Jane, it never
entered his head to fancy himself in love with her. Therefore, when she
threw herself into his arms, he hugged her in a very sincere and
brotherly way, but kissed her with a pair of cast lips of Adonis. Of
course he would never forget her. Jane went to bed and sobbed her heart
out. Paul slept but little. The breaking up of the home meant the end
of many precious and gentle things, and without them he knew that his
life would be the poorer. And he vowed once more, to himself, that he
would never prove disloyal to Jane.

While he remained in London he saw what he could of her, sacrificing
many a Sunday's outing with the theatre folk. Jane, instinctively aware
of this, and finding in his demeanour, after examining it with
femininely jealous, microscopic eyes, nothing perfunctory, was duly
grateful, and gave him of her girlish best. She developed very quickly
after her entrance into the world of struggle. Very soon it was the
woman and not the child who listened to the marvellous youth's story of
the wonders that would be. She never again threw herself into his arms,
and he never again called her a "little silly." She was dimly aware of
change, though she knew that the world could hold no other man for her.
But Paul was not.

And then Paul went on tour.

CHAPTER VII

PAUL had been four years on the stage. Save as a memory they ha