Perhaps, but, compared to that toward which she had been looking, it was a very poor substitute. And all the rest of that day her disappointment increased rather than diminished. She dreaded Bob’s call that evening. Poor fellow! he would be as disappointed as she was. But he must go, just the same. He must not sacrifice his opportunity for travel and study because hers was postponed. He must go as he had planned. She should insist upon that. There were other thoughts, too, but she tried not to think them. It had seemed to her that her uncle’s reasons--or Mrs. Carter’s reasons--for canceling the trip had been rather vague and not altogether sufficient to warrant upsetting the plans of so many people. And the decision was so sudden. Her last letter from the lady had contained not a hint of change. It was full of enthusiastic anticipation. Her uncle-- She resolutely refused to think along that line. Her uncle had felt so badly when he broke the news to her. She remembered the tremble in his voice. No, she would not be so disloyal or ungrateful as to suspect.... Never mind Nabby’s suggestion. Nabby was what her employer sometimes called her, a clucking old hen. She would have gone to her Aunt Reliance and sought consolation there, but the Welfare Society met again that afternoon and she felt bound to attend the meeting. Bob Griffin, when he came that evening, was in such a glow of high spirits that he could scarcely wait for Foster Townsend to leave the library before voicing his feelings. Townsend appeared to notice his condition. “You look fit as a fiddle to-night, seems to me,” he observed. “Counting the days till you get to Paris, I suppose; eh? Well, I don’t wonder. Pretty big thing for a young fellow.” Bob was a little surprised. “Oh, then Esther has told you about it?” he asked. “Um-hum. She told me.” “What do you think of the idea, sir? Of my going there to study, I mean?” “Think it is just what you should do. If you’ve made up your mind to paint for a living then the better painter you learn to be the better living you’ll make--if you can live at all at that job.... Oh, yes, yes!” he added, before either of the pair could reply. “I suppose likely you think you can. And you may be right. _I_ don’t know about such things.” The moment the hall door had closed behind him Bob turned to Esther and seized her hands. “Only a few more weeks,” he announced, triumphantly. “In less than a month you and I will be sauntering down the Champs Elysées or the ‘Boul Mich’ or somewhere. I have engaged my passage. I am going on the _Lavornia_. She sails from New York just eight days after your ship leaves. We shan’t be separated long, shall we?” She withdrew her hands from his and shook her head. “Bob,” she said, “I have dreaded seeing you to-night. I have something to tell you that you won’t like at all. I don’t like it either, but it can’t be helped. All our plans are changed. I am not going to Paris.”