e safest
place."

"And they went like lambs. But, then, the Banditti always did."

"Oh, the Banditti!" He guessed that she was smiling to herself. "The
Banditti wouldn't have grown up like that. They were much too
nice--never quite really wicked, were they? Just carried off their feet.
Still, they were never quite the same after you left. I think they
always hankered a little after the good old days when they rang
door-hells and chivied their governesses. Probably they will never be so
happy again."

"They had you. It was you they really cared about. Everybody did what
you liked."

"You didn't."

"I did--in the end."

It was odd that they should be both thinking of that last encounter and
that they should speak of it so guardedly, as though it were still a
delicate matter.

"I didn't know you were never coming again. I waited for you in the
afternoon--for weeks and weeks."

"Did you?" He looked at her quickly, taken off his guard, and then away
again with a scornful laugh. "Oh, I don't believe it. You knew I wasn't
nice--not your sort. You're just making it up."

"I wonder why you say that?" she asked dispassionately. "It's cheap and
stupid. You're not really stupid and you weren't cheap, even if you
weren't nice. And you know that I don't tell lies."

For a moment he was too startled and too ashamed to answer. Cheap. That
was just the word for it. The sort of thing that common young men said
to their common young women. And, of course, he did know. Her integrity
was a thing you felt. But he could never bring himself to tell her that
he had been afraid to believe too easily, or that he did not want to have
to remember her afterwards, waiting there day by day, in their deserted
playground. It troubled him already, like a vague, indefinite pain.

He did not even apologize.

"I suppose I should have come back sooner or later. But I didn't have
the chance. My father died that night--unexpectedly." He brushed aside
her low interjection.

"Oh, I was jolly glad. But after that we had to clear out. There was no
money at all."

"But you lived in a big house. Your father was a great doctor."

"I was a great liar," he retorted impatiently. "I suppose I wanted to
impress you. Perhaps he was a great doctor. Anyhow, he never did any
work. There was a bailiff in the house when he died and a pile of bills.
And not much else."

"What happened, then? Did you go with your stepmother