“No. No trouble. I just want to get away. I want you to talk to me and keep me from thinking about myself—and some things. I—I’m afraid tonight, Jim.” Jim bit his lip boyishly. “Confound it!” he said. “I simply can’t get away to-night. Business. But don’t I wish I could go with you some place—and talk to you. There are things I wanted to say to you the other night, Marie, that—well, I guess it took time for me to think of. I want to talk to you about the same thing, for I’ve been thinking about the same thing. I was too abrupt. You were right to give me the answer you did—but I’ve got some more arguments now, a lot of them.” Marie’s face softened. How boyish, how eagerly boyish he was! “You mustn’t talk about that,” she said, gently. “I can’t change. Your work is here. You’re tied to it. And I must get away from it—to stay. Can’t you understand? Don’t misunderstand me, Jim. It wasn’t to give you a chance to ask me to reconsider that I asked you to go out with me. No. No. It was to have you to talk to. To have the consciousness that I was with a man—a man who—was—a human being.” Her voice faltered. “I wanted you to say to me some of the things you have said before—about people being good, about the world being good, about faith and trustworthiness and honor. I don’t know those things, but I want to hear about them—to-night. Because I’m afraid.” “Afraid of what?” “Afraid of—myself. I talked to you that first day we met—more than I should. So you know me. I am the same girl I was then, but I am not the same girl. Then I knew it would be possible for me to choose the—bitter way. To choose it deliberately as a way of escape. But I did not know then how bitter that way would be. Now I know I should not choose it deliberately, but be forced into it by—by myself.” “You mustn’t talk that way, I won’t have you say that sort of thing about—my girl.” “It’s true, and I am afraid. Can’t your business step aside for to-night?” “It can’t, Marie. If it were an ordinary night or an ordinary matter that calls me, I would stay.” He stopped, considered. It was his nature to speak little of his affairs, to offer few confidences. To tell Marie the truth seemed his only honorable way of escape from the dilemma. “I’ll tell you about it,” he said, with sudden decision, “and you will understand.” Then he told her, from the beginning in his father’s library. He described his difficulties, his war with the Clothespin Club, his bitterer war with Michael Moran. He told her what Moran had done and was seeking to do. He told her his measures of defense and of counter-attack, and particularly the plan for to-night. “And so you see,” he ended, “I must go.” “Yes,” she said, slowly, “you must go. And Michael Moran has done those things? You must hate him!” “Yes,” said Jim, “but not for what he has done to me. I hate him because—” He hesitated, unable to bring himself to utter the thought in connection with Marie. “Because?” Marie questioned.