Even at that moment with his self-pitying voice in her ears, reciting his Iliad of reflected troubles, her mind found a whimsical parallel for his self-absorption. He was like some unheroic wanderer in desert places who had stumbled upon another equally unfortunate, but more stalwart of heart. He had greedily fallen upon the depleted water-supply, drinking deep and never pausing to consider that the tongue of the wayfarer who offered him a flask was more parched than his own. He was a minstrel and a troubadour who held himself immune from the need of meeting stress with combat. His mission in life was to sing and accept, and now it pleased him to sing sadly of himself. Yet the one way she could not go on helping him was the particular way he elected to be helped. He chose to let himself drift and vacillate, and the aid that he asked of her was that she should drift near enough for him to have her companionship. He was like a wakeful child who required that she, too, should be sleepless that he might escape loneliness. "And so," she said, forcing a smile, which concealed all that was in her heart, "you were lonely, and you came to me." "Yes, dear." His voice was eager. "I had to see you. To stay in exile any longer was unendurable. I was thinking of you always, wanting you always, and so I came. You forgive me, don't you?" Marcia laughed. "It's very nice to be wanted," she answered, "but sit over there across the hearth and light your cigar. It's gone out." Paul looked down resentfully at the cigar and lifted his hand to toss it away, but the girl laid her fingers on his wrist and laughed. "No," she commanded. "Smoke it. Tobacco is soothing and I like the fragrance. It's a Romney panatella, isn't it?" "How do you manage to remember details like that?" Paul inquired with boyish pleasure. "Other women don't carry in mind the brand of tobacco that a man prefers." "I'm not other women," she reminded him lightly. "I have a genius for minute and trivial things. The others flatter you by burning incense to your music--and I remember that you take two lumps of sugar in your coffee and one slice of lemon in your tea and that you must have your Martini extra dry." To herself she was saying, with a lump in her throat which waged war on the bright smile in her eyes, "I hoped that he might have come differently. I hoped that he might have made an end of vacillation. Now it's all going to be harder. I must send him away again--" One hand which fell over the arm of her chair and which he could not see clutched its fingers convulsively, squeezing the handkerchief it held into a small wad of linen.