“I think you are a--a noble man,” choked Virginia. That disconcerted him. “Oh Lord--don't think that. No, Young Lady, don't try to make any plaster saint out of _me_. My life goes on. I've got to eat, drink and be merry. I'm built that way. But just the same my heart on the inside's pretty sore, Young Lady. I want to tell you that the whole inside of my heart is _sore as a boil_!” They were returning for the hats. Suddenly Virginia stopped, and it was a soft-eyed and gentle Virginia who turned to him after the pause. “There are lovely things to be bought in Paris for women who aren't well. Such soft, lovely things to wear in your room. Not but what I think these other things are all right. As you say, they may--interest her. But they aren't things she can use just now, and wouldn't you like her to have some of those soft lovely things she could actually wear? They might help most of all. To wake in the morning and find herself in something so beautiful--” “Where do you get 'em?” he demanded promptly. And so they went to one of those shops which have, more than all the others, enshrined Paris in feminine hearts. And never was lingerie selected with more loving care than that which Virginia picked out that afternoon. A tear fell on one particularly lovely _robe de nuit_--so soothingly soft, so caressingly luxurious, it seemed that surely it might help bring release from the bondage of those crushing years. As they were leaving they were given two packages. “Just the kimona thing you liked,” he said, “and a trinket or two. Now that we're such good friends, you won't feel like you did this morning.” “And if I don't want them myself, I might send them to my mother,” Virginia replied, a quiver in her laugh at her own little joke. He had put her in her cab; he had tried to tell her how much he thanked her; they had said good-bye and the _cocher_ had cracked his whip when he came running after her. “Why, Young Lady,” he called out, “we don't know each other's _names_.” She laughed and gave hers. “Mine's William P. Johnson,” he said. “Part French and part Italian. But now look here, Young Lady--or I mean, Miss Clayton. A fellow at the hotel was telling me something last night that made me _sick_. He said American girls sometimes got awfully up against it here. He said one actually starved last year. Now, I don't like that kind of business. Look here, Young Lady, I want you to promise that if you--you or any of your gang--get up against it you'll cable William P. Johnson, of Cincinnati, Ohio.” The twilight grey had stolen upon Paris. And there was a mist which the street lights only penetrated a little way--as sometimes one's knowledge of life may only penetrate life a very little way. Her cab stopped by a blockade, she watched the burly back of William P. Johnson disappearing into the mist. The red box which held the yellow opera cloak she could see longer than all else.