“Oh, _don’t_, Jack!” She turned away her head, pressed her hand to her eyes, dropped it in a hopeless gesture. She faced him again, her sensitive mouth quivering at the corners, her expression appealing from misery to compassion. Evidently, she hardly dared trust herself to speak. “You know I love you!” Her voice caught, almost broke. “You know I love you now--shall never love any one else. All my life I shall remember you--if I live fifty years----” His short laugh was intended to express that terrible cynicism of Youth losing its first illusions. “Cut it out, Betty! In fifty years you will be seventy. No doubt you will be a charming old lady. You may even be sentimental--you can indulge safely in the luxury, then! But you won’t even remember my name. You’ll only be interested in the love-affairs of your grandchildren!” She smiled at him involuntarily--and then consciously maintained the gleam in her eyes, quick to emphasize and elaborate the note of comedy he had accidentally struck. It was escape from threatening acrimony. “And you, Jack? In nineteen-seventy-two? Will you remember _my_ name?--Will you be even sentimental, I wonder?--Oh, I should like to see you--a cynical old grandfather, telling your grandchildren not to marry for money, but to marry where money is!--Oh, Jack!” Her voice was genuinely mirthful. “You _will_ come and see me and talk their affairs over with me, won’t you? We shall be two such dear old cronies!” He had to concentrate on his frown, endangered by her infectious sense of humour. “I shall never marry!” he announced, gloomily. “So there’s not much use in promising to discuss my grandchildren’s affairs with you fifty years hence. I shall never love another woman.” She ignored the sombre vaticination, determined to keep on a safer plane of futurity. “Oh, wouldn’t you like to see, Jack? Fifty years ahead--and all that will happen in the meantime?” There was just a hint of seriousness in the light tone, in the bright eyes which smiled into his. “If one could only know!” Her face went wistful. “I often wonder--these crystal-gazers and people--whether they can really see----” She looked up at, him. “Jack! You are so clever and know everything--don’t you know any place where one can go and really see what is going to happen?” He smiled, half in pleasure at her flattery, half in the consciousness of being about to say a clever thing. The smile was wholly youthful, despite his assumption of withered cynicism. “Yes. The place to which you are sending me.” “What place?” Her tone was puzzled. “Hell!” he said shortly. She wrinkled her brows. “I don’t understand.”