THE TOUCHSTONE
"Abroad, you mean?"
"I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my going abroad will help."
"Of course—I see that. And I see your considerateness in putting its advantages negatively."
"Negatively?"
"In dwelling simply on what the going will take you from, not on what it will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, to get away from a life like this." He summed up in a disparaging glance the background of indigent furniture. "The question is how you'll like coming back to it."
She seemed to accept the full consequences of his thought. "I only know I don't like leaving it."
He flung back sombrely, "You don't even put it conditionally then?"
Her gaze deepened. "On what?"
He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and paused before her. "On the alternative of marrying me."
The slow color—even her blushes seemed deliberate—rose to her lower lids; her lips stirred, but the
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