“Helping her to keep up her courage by letting her know that one man respects her.” “Don’t you think she may get to expect more than that?” “Certainly not. Why should she?” “Just because girls do,” I said. “Do you write her letters?” “Sometimes.” “What do you write about?” He wouldn’t tell me that. Next day I went down to the shop to investigate matters. Since the Bantam wouldn’t listen to sense, I intended to hint to the girl the danger of what she was doing. Of course she could never marry him; but I was morally certain that that was what she was aiming at. The shop was a stationer’s. I had chosen an hour in the afternoon when it was likely to be empty, everyone being engaged in some form of athletics. I entered and saw a daintily gowned woman with her back turned towards me. She was all in white. Her waist was of the smallest. She had a mass of honey-colored hair. She swung about at sound of my footstep. “Why, Kitty, of all people in the world! I didn’t expect to find you here.” “As good as old times,” she said. “I’ve often seen you pass the window, but I thought you wouldn’t want to know me.” “And why not?” “Because of what happened.” “Rapson?” She flushed and hung her head. I wondered if she meant what I thought she meant. I hated to see her sad; she looked so young and pretty. I began to ask her what she was doing. “Doing! Minding shop, remembering, growing old, and earning my living. It’s just horrid to be here, Dante. I have to watch you ’Varsity men having a good time--and once I belonged to your set. And they come in and stare at me, and pay me silly compliments--and I have to smile and pretend I like it. That’s what I’m paid for. They don’t know how I hate them. When they have their sweethearts and sisters up, they walk past me as though they never knew me.” “But are they all like that?” She smiled, and I knew she loved him. When she spoke her voice trembled. “There’s one of them is different.” “Kitty, he’s the one I came to talk about.” With instinctive foreknowledge of the purpose of my errand, her face became tragic. “His father’s in India,” I explained. “From what I hear of him he’s very proud. If the Bantam made a marriage that could in any way be regarded as imprudent, he’d cut him off. He’d be ruined. You know how it would be; the world would turn its back on him.” “What do we care about the world?” she said. “The world’s a coward.” It was wonderful how coldly practical I could become in dealing with another man’s heart affairs--I, who spent my time dreaming of the most extraordinarily unconventional marriages. “The world may be a coward, Kitty, but you have to live in it. Besides, are you sure that the Bantam really cares for you? Have you told him everything?”