“Yes; I’m sorry. Just a little bit—at least.” “I’m most awfully sorry myself,” she said frankly. “I shall miss you.” “As a curiosity?” he asked, smiling. “As a friend. You have been a friend to us—to me,” she amended sweetly. “Each time I see you, I have more the feeling that you’ve been more of a friend than I know.” “‘That which thy servant is,’” he quoted lightly. But beneath the lightness she divined a pain that she could not wholly fathom. Quite aware of her power, Miss Polly Brewster was now, for one of the few times in her life, stricken with contrition for her use of it. “And I—I haven’t been very nice,” she faltered. “I’m afraid sometimes I’ve been quite horrid.” “You? You’ve been ‘the glory and the dream.’ I shall be needing memories for a while. And when the glory has gone, at least the dream will remain—tethered.” “But I’m not going to be a dream alone,” she said, with wistful lightness. “It’s far too much like being a ghost. I’m going to be a friend, if you’ll let me. And I’m going to write to you, if you will tell me where. You won’t find it so very easy to make a mere memory of me. And when you come home—When _are_ you coming home?” He shook his head. “Then you must find out, and let me know. And you must come and visit us at our summer place, where there’s a mountain-side that we can sit on, and you can pretend that our lake is the Caribbean and hate it to your heart’s content—” “I don’t believe I can ever quite hate the Caribbean again.” “From this view you mustn’t, anyway. I shouldn’t like that. As for our lake, nobody could really help loving it. So you must be sure and come, won’t you?” “Dreams!” he murmured. “Isn’t there room in the scientific life for dreams?” “Yes. But not for their fulfillment.” “But there will be beetles and dragon-flies on our mountain,” she went on, conscious of talking against time, of striving to put off the moment of departure. “You’ll find plenty of work there. Do you know, Mr. Beetle Man, you haven’t told me a thing, really, about your work, or a thing, really, about yourself. Is that the way to treat a friend?” “When I undertook to spread before you the true and veracious history of my life,” he began, striving to make his tone light, “you would none of it.” “Are you determined to put me off? Do you think that I wouldn’t find the things that are real to you interesting?” “They’re quite technical,” he said shyly. “But they are the big things to you, aren’t they? They make life for you?” “Oh, yes; that, of course.” It was as if he were surprised at the need of such a question. “I suppose I find the same excitement and adventure in research that other men find in politics, or war, or making money.” “Adventure?” she said, puzzled. “I shouldn’t have supposed research an adventurous career, exactly.”