had to go and dine with you. He didn't mind; but was glad when I
said I had an English editor for a friend, glad that I should have
someone to talk to about London and the people I used to know. If it had
been a woman I loved, I should have been forced to tell lies: she would
have been jealous of my past. I told him the truth, and when I spoke
about you he grew interested and excited, and at last he put a wish
before me. He wanted to know if he might come and leave his bicycle
outside and look through the window of the restaurant, just to see us at
dinner. I told him there might possibly be women-guests. He replied that
he would be delighted to see me in dress-clothes talking to gentlemen
and ladies.

"Might he come?" he persisted.

"Of course I said he could come, and he came, but I never saw him.

"The next time we met he told me all about it; how he had picked you out
from my description of you, and how he knew Baueer from his likeness to
Dumas _pere_, and he was delightful about it all.

"Now, Frank, would any girl have come to see you enjoying yourself with
other people? Would any girl have stared through the window and been
glad to see you inside amusing yourself with other men and women? You
know there's not a girl on earth with such unselfish devotion. There is
no comparison, I tell you, between the boy and the girl; I say again
deliberately, you don't know what a great romantic passion is or the
high unselfishness of true love."

"You have put it with extraordinary ability," I said, "as of course I
knew you would. I think I can understand the charm of such
companionship; but only from the young boy's point of view, not from
yours. I can understand how you have opened to him a new heaven and a
new earth, but what has he given you? Nothing. On the other hand any
finely gifted girl would have given you something. If you had really
touched her heart, you would have found in her some instinctive
tenderness, some proof of unselfish, exquisite devotion that would have
made your eyes prickle with a sense of inferiority.

"After all, the essence of love, the finest spirit of that companionship
you speak about, of the sisterhood of soul, is that the other person
should quicken you, too; open to you new horizons, discover new
possibilities; and how could your soldier boy help you in any way? He
brought you no new ideas, no new feelings, could reveal no new thoughts
to you. I can see no romance, no growth of soul in