It was then almost six. Without waiting to telephone explanations he jumped in a taxi and shot off uptown. At the Drakes' he sent up his name by Thompson, learning with a sudden tightening of the heart that Drake himself was home. He went into the quiet reception room, nervously excited by the approaching crisis, resolved now that it was up, to push it to its ultimate conclusion. As he whipped back and forth, fingering impatiently the shining green leaves of the waxed rubber plant, all at once, to his amazement, Patsie stood before him. "You here?" he said, stopping short. She nodded, red in her cheeks, looking quickly at him and away. "Doris is changing her dress; she'll be down right away. Didn't you get the telegram?" "I'm sorry-- I was out all day." He stopped and she was silent, both awkwardly conscious of the other. Finally he stammered: "I asked Doris to thank you--for getting my bag ready and--and your message." "Oh, Bojo," she said impulsively and the spots of red on her cheek spread like names, "I want to speak to you so much. I have been thinking over so many things that I ought to say." "You can say anything," he said gently. "Bojo, you must marry Doris!" she said brokenly, joining her hands. "Why?" he said, too startled to notice the absurdity of the question. "She needs you. She loves you. If you could have seen her all Sunday night when we--when she was afraid you had been ruined. You don't know how she cares. I didn't. I was terribly mistaken--unjust. You mustn't let her go off and marry some one she doesn't care about, like Boskirk, the way Dolly did." "But I must do what is right for me too," he said desperately, moved by the radiance in her eyes that seemed to flow out and envelope him irresistibly. "I have a right to love too, to find a woman who knows what love means--" "Don't--don't," she said, turning away miserably, too young to make the pretense of not understanding him. "Listen, Drina," he said, catching her hand. "I am up against a decision, the greatest decision in my life, which means whether I am to have the right to my own self-respect and yours and others. One way means money, an easy way to everything people want in this world, and no blame attached except what I myself might feel. The other means standing on my own feet, no favors, taking a loss of thousands of dollars, and a fight of perhaps five, ten years to get where I am now. Which would you do? No, you don't even need to answer," he said joyfully, carried away by the look in her eyes as she swung fearlessly around. "I know you."