Since Alida had taken my advice and written to her father that she would not marry the brown man, nor leave the life for which he had educated her for that of the harem, she had treated me as an intimate friend and adviser. We had long talks together, so often and so long, indeed, that I could see that Keller Bey and Linn were seriously troubled. Perhaps they were a little jealous also, but for all that they did not dream of opposing their wills to the slightest wish of their ward. "What shall I do when you are gone?" Alida cried one day. It was still early forenoon, for the Sous-Prefet's lady had to attend a Government function. Besides, it was a dismalish day outside with a low crawl of leaden clouds overhead, and along the horizon only one swiftly eclipsed streak of gold bead-work to show where the sunshine was at work. "I can _not_ stay on here, content with only the round of teaching visits, and the love of these two good souls! 'I have had playmates--I have had companions,' as your poet sings, and now there is you--and Hugh--who have come to me to show me how lonely I was." She thought a while, and then in her imperious way she sketched a programme. "There is no reason why Keller Bey and Linn should stop here. The house is well placed, and one of the best in the town. It would let to-morrow. Why should we not all go to Aramon and be happy? We could find a house there and company--all those girls, Hugh's sisters, of whom you have told me. I should be so happy. And we would get away from the brown man. He would not know where to find us if he should come back!" She clapped her hands joyfully, as if the matter were already settled, and ran upstairs to break the matter to Keller and Linn. When next I saw these two I was conscious of a little chill in the atmosphere. They thought that I was responsible for the wish of Alida to leave Autun and go to Aramon. "Do you think it is a proper thing," said Linn, "that a maid should follow two young men?" "I think you wrong her," I said, "unwittingly of course, but certainly you mistake Alida. It springs from no feeling of love for either of us, but she has now tasted comradeship and the equality of years for the first time. She thinks there is nothing else worth living for in the world. She will change her mind by and by. Her mind and affection will turn again to her elders." So I spoke from the unplumbed depths of a youthful self-sufficiency--that curious malady (happily fleeting) which compels all clever young men to feel called upon to lay down rules for their elders and for the world about them, at or about the age of twenty-one.