He made a little movement toward me with both hands. Then he took them back and sat quite still and said, in that kind voice: “I know you are going abroad, and when you come back you will laugh at the dolls you played with when you were a child.” But I cried, softly, though, because it was just as if I were alone, thinking things out and being sorry, sorry for myself--and ashamed. Until now I'd never known how ashamed I was. “Don't cry, child,” he was saying. “For God's sake, don't cry!” I think it came over me then, as it hadn't before, that all that part of my life was spoiled. I'd been engaged and thought I liked somebody, and now it was all over and done. “I don't know what I'm crying for,” I said, at last, when I could stop. “I suppose it's because I'm different now, different from the other girls, different from myself. I can't ever be happy any more.” He spoke, very quickly. “Is it because you liked Goward so much?” “Like him!” I said. “Like Harry Goward? Why, I--” There I stopped, because I couldn't think of any word small enough, and I think he understood, for he laughed out quickly. “Now,” said he, “I'm a psychologist. You remember that, don't you? It used to impress you a good deal.” “Oh,” said I, “it does impress me. Nobody has ever seemed so wise as you. Nobody!” “Then it's understood that I'm a sage from the Orient. I know the workings of the human mind. And I tell you a profound truth: that the only way to stop thinking of a thing is to stop thinking of it. Now, you're not to think of Goward and all this puppet-show again. Not a minute. Not an instant. Do you hear?” He sounded quite stern, and I answered as if I had been in class. “Yes, sir.” “You are to think of Italy, and how blue the sea is--and Germany, and how good the beer is--and Charlie Ned and Lorraine, and what trumps they are. Do you hear?” “Yes, sir,” said I, and because I knew we were going to part and there would be nobody else to advise me in the same way, I went on in a great hurry for fear there should not be time. “I can't live at home even after we come back. I could never be pointed at, like Aunt Elizabeth, and have people whisper and say I've had a disappointment. I must make my own life. I must have a profession. Do you think I could teach? Do you think I could learn to teach--psychology?” He didn't answer for a long time, and I didn't dare look at him, though the moon was so bright now that I could see how white his hand was, lying on his knee, and the chasing of the ring on his little finger. It had been his mother's engagement ring, he told me once. But he spoke, and very gently and seriously. “I am sure you could teach some things. Whether psychology--but we can talk of that later. There'll be lots of time. It proves I am going over on the same steamer with Charlie Ned and Lorraine and you.”