her. She rose abruptly, there had been little or no caressing between them. Now she spoke quickly:
"Don't hope too much… or… or expect anything. I am a megalomaniac: everything that happens to me seems larger, grander, finer, more wonderful than that which happens to any one else."
She paused a moment. "This… then, between us is friendship?" she went on tentatively. He answered her very steadily: "This, between us, is what you will." "You know how it has been with me?" Her voice was broken. He was deeply moved and answered:
"God gave it to me to comfort you." There was a long pause after that. It was getting late, and they must soon part. He kissed her hands when he went away, first one and then the other. "Until next week."
"Until next week, or any time you need me." Then there were letters between them, letters that have already been transcribed.
He came the next week and the next. A man of infinite culture, widely read and with a very real knowledge of every subject of which he spoke, it was not perhaps strange that she fell under the spell of his companionship, and found it ever more satisfying.
Her own education was American and superficial,
