Betty laughed happily: “Well, Noll,” said she--“if you forget me as wholly as you have done these two years, I can almost bear it!” “You were becoming obliterated, sweetheart,” said he hoarsely--“yet you were not leaving me free. Other women’s skirts were rustling in my ears, but your fragrance came between. Now these others are all silent--I hear only you. You must set me no dullard task of loving a vague image of you. I love you, dear heart--and I must love you. I want nothing more. I will have nothing less.” He was silent for awhile; and she held his fingers lovingly. He roused: “They speak gravely of the vague loves of gods and angels; but what is all their thin love to the love of a man for a woman? What do the unbodied gods know that is half so sweet as the love of a woman for a child?” Betty smiled: “Noll,” said she--“you are wasting argument upon me--I love you.” He raised her gloved hand to his lips and kissed the warm fingers: “I have only drifted--aimlessly,” he said. “But I am done with this monk’s life. This day three weeks you come with me to Paris, mated to me. And I will go through my apprenticeship to art and letters and win a wage at the same time.” “But--Noll! you must not throw away a certainty--you have an allowance----” The young fellow’s face darkened: “I discovered from my father, only yesterday, what was the price of Wyntwarde’s allowance to me--and I have written to my cousin that he may keep his money--I go my own way.... He is a man that stands hotly enough on the nobility of his blood; I asked him what was the benefit to me of that blood if it bound me to menial practices. I told him I would be no paid accomplice of his, or any other man’s--that I will pay him back his services to me before I count myself a free man----” “But, Noll----” “I know what you are going to ask, Betty. No; my father and I did not part on the best of terms. I did not think that my father would have sold my freedom.” Betty sighed. Noll heard the sigh, and came out of his brooding fit. He took her hand: “Nay, Betty,” said he--“we must not fill this dear trysting-place with glum ghosts. I love you, sweetheart--and I have no love for such as would rob me of you.” “But, Noll”--the tears came brimming to her eyes--“I do not want my love to be a pain to all these others.”