When he was done he pushed back his chair and she dropped her eyes, for his were now upon her and had the steady, reckoning look she had observed--and feared--when he regarded her for that moment at his entrance. She could not endure the feeling that he watched her, and watched her so. "You will go to bed soon, Percival," she said. "You do look so tired." He replied: "I am not tired. I have something to ask you first, Aunt Maggie;" and after a pause he went on: "Aunt Maggie, I was telling you this afternoon that I thought I ought to be doing something. Well, more than that I thought I ought to be doing something, and more than merely telling you--because I know I was in a great state about it and went off in a great state." She answered, "Yes, Percival?" "You said there was plenty of time for that." "Yes, Percival." "There isn't, Aunt Maggie." And he went on quickly: "there isn't plenty of time to think about what I am going to do. I am not a boy any longer. Even if I started to-morrow I should be starting late. Every one at my age is doing something." His tone was firm and quiet but was kind. She said that which made it take a harder note. "Percival, you need only wait," she said, "till you are twenty-one." She saw his face darken in a change as swift and chill as sudden shadow along the sea. "Oh, that!" he cried. "That! I don't want to hear that any more or ever again! Is that all you have for me?" She clasped and unclasped her hands on the table before her. He waited several moments for her answer. Then he said: "And what am I to do till then?" She told him: "Only wait with me, Percival." He said very quietly: "No, I will not wait. I will not stay with you. I am going away." The stress that each suffered was broken out of them by his announcement. The thought of losing him, the thought of how a word, revealing her secret, would keep him, broke from her in her cry: "No, no, Percival! Oh, Percival, no!" Her sudden voice and its anguish smote him to his depths in his own stress as a sudden cry in the night that shocks the heart. He uttered in a voice she had never heard--most hoarse, most atremble: "Oh, understand! For pity's sake try to understand. I am so that I will never sleep again--never again till I have earned my sleep. Oh, understand that I am a man!" She saw his dear face, his handsome face, his face that she loved so and was to lose unless she spoke, all twisted up as though he writhed in pain. She cried: "Percival, don't look like that. I can keep you. I cannot let you go." He looked at her with eyes that told his anguish of this scene and of his spirit. "You cannot keep me," he said. "I am going." She breathed: "By telling you I can keep you." He said: "Tell me, then."' She began, her tongue heavy as a key is rusty that is to turn in a lock closed eighteen years; "Rollo--" she began, and stopped.