d
while she hid it on his breast she pushed his away, and said:--

"No, we'll discuss it now. You must promise me that you will not go. If
you do not, I shall not like you, and you shall not--" She did not
finish the sentence, and Dic asked gently:--

"I shall not--what, Rita?"

"Anything," came the enlightening response from the face hidden on his
breast. "Besides, you will break my heart, and if you go, I'll know you
don't care for me. I'll know you have been deceiving me." Then the face
came up, and the great brown eyes looked pleadingly into his. "Dic, I've
leaned on you so long--ever since I was a child--that I have no strength
of my own; but now that I have given myself up to you, I--I cannot stand
alone, even for a day. If you go away from me now, it will break my
heart. I tell you it will."

Dic felt her tears upon his hand, and soon he heard soft sobs and felt
their gentle convulsions within her breast. Of course the result was
inevitable; the combatants were so unevenly matched. Woman's tears are
the most potent resolvent know to chemistry. They will dissolve rocks of
resolution, and Dic's resolutions, while big with intent, were small in
flintiness, though he had thought well of them at the time they were
formed. He could not endure the pain inflicted by Rita's tears. He had
not learned how easy and useful tears are to women. They burned him.

"Please, Rita, please don't cry," he pleaded.

The tears, while they came readily and without pain, were honest; at any
rate, the girl being so young, they were not deliberately intended to be
useful. They were a part of her instinct of self-preservation.

"Don't cry, please, Rita. Your tears hurt me."

"Then promise me you won't go to New York." I fear there is no getting
away entirely from the theory of utility. With evident intent to crowd
the battle upon a wavering foe, the tears came fast and furious.

"Promise me," sobbed Rita; and I know you will love Dic better when I
tell you that he promised. Then the girl's face came up, and, I grieve
to say, the tears, having served their purpose, ceased at once.

Next morning Dic went to see Billy Little and told him he had come to
have a talk. Billy locked the store door and the friends repaired to the
river. There they found a shady resting-place, and Billy, lighting his
pipe, said:--

"Blaze away."

"I know you will despise me," the young man began.

"No, I won't," interrupted Billy. "You are human. I don'