"I don't want them!" Joan's voice shook. Poor, lonely little thing, she wanted exactly that! "I bet that's not true!" ventured Raymond. Then suddenly: "Why do you laugh as you do?" "What's the matter with my laugh?" "I don't know. It's old and it's awfully kiddish--it's rather upsetting. I keep remembering it as I always shall your face now that I have seen it!" Truth can take care of itself if it has half a chance. It was beginning to grip Joan through the mists that shrouded her--mists that life has evolved for the protection of those who might never be able to distinguish between the wolf in sheep's skin and sheep in wolf hide. Joan knew the ancient code of propriety, but she knew, also, the ring of truth and she was young and lonely. She knew she ought not to be playing with wild animals, but she was also sure in the deepest and most sincere parts of her brain that the man beside her, strange as it might seem, was really a very nice and well-behaved domestic animal and was making rather a comical exhibition of himself in the skin of the beast of prey. "You haven't told me where you are going," Raymond said, presently. "Home!" The one word had the dreary, empty sound that it could not help having when Joan considered the studio with Sylvia gone and Patricia an uncertain element. "Are you?" Raymond asked, lamely. One had to say something or turn back. Joan felt like crying. Then suddenly Raymond said: "I wish you'd come and have dinner with me, and I'm not going to excuse myself or explain anything. I know I'm using all the worn-out tricks of fellows that are anything but decent; but I know that you know--though how you do I'm blest if _I_ know--but I know that you understand. The thing's too big for me. I've just got to risk it! I'm lonely and I bet you are; we've got to eat--why not eat together?" The words sounded like explosives, and Joan mentally dodged, but at the end felt that she knew all there was to know and she caught her breath and said very slowly: "I'm going to be quite as honest as you are. I will have dinner with you because I'm as lonely as can be; my people, like yours, are out of town, and I _do_ understand though I cannot say just how I do. One thing I want you to promise: You will never, under any circumstances, try to find out more about me than I freely give. Now or--ever! When I disappear, I want really to be safe from intrusion." Raymond promised, and so they set out on the Sun Road. CHAPTER XVII "_It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own._" The trouble with the Sun Road is this: one is apt to be blinded by the glare. In their solitude, the solitude of a big city, Raymond and Joan trod the shining way with high courage.