threw himself into a
chair with an explosive sigh, half heat and half regret. "I've had
business letters. I've got to be off."

"Off!" She regarded him in a frank dismay. "Billy, you break my heart!"

"I break my own heart," said Billy gallantly. "I've taken my passage.
Say the word, dear girl, and I'll take it for two."

She looked at him in silent trouble. Tears had dimmed her eyes.

"Well, Billy," she said at last, "this is the pleasantest summer I shall
ever have."

"Say the word," he admonished her again. "We've got more summers before
us."

She smiled at him, and winked away the tears.

"Then come back and spend them here. Electra's going, too,--like a
stowaway. You won't let her cross with you, and see at least that she
doesn't hold services on board?"

"God forbid!" said Billy. "I'm afraid of her."

"I don't blame you. Billy, I suppose we ought to be saying solemn things
to each other, if you're really going."

"Clip ahead, old lady. What do you want to say?"

"I'd like to clear up my accounts a little. I want to get my books in
order. I don't intend to die in a fog. Billy, how much of it was real?"

"How much of what, Florrie?"

"Of life. Of the things we thought and felt. Is there such a thing as
love, Billy?"

He got up under the necessity of thought and stood, hands in his pockets
and legs apart, looking over the garden beds. He might have been gazing
out to sea for the Islands of the Blest.

"Florrie," he said at length, "I guess there is."

"Did you love me, Billy? No compliments. We're beyond them."

"Yes," said Billy, after another pause. "I think I did. You were a great
deal to me at that time. And when I found it was no use, other people
were a great deal to me, one after another. Several of 'em. I looked
upon it then as a species of game. But they didn't last, Florrie. You
did. You always give me a kind of a queer feeling; you're all mixed up
in my mind with pink and blue and hats with rosebuds on 'em and college
songs."

It was not much like a grand passion, but it was something, the honest
confession of a boy.

"I thought it was a game, too," she said musingly. "Do you suppose it
was, Billy? Or were we wrong?"

Billy whirled about and faced her.

"Dead wrong! No, Florrie, it never was meant for a game. It's earnest.
The ones that take it so are the ones that inherit the earth. No, not
that--but they go in for all they're worth and they've something left to
show for it. Th