She felt suddenly little and frightened and helpless. The current of mischief and merriment dropped away from her for a minute, here where everything, from the class picture on the wall to the pipe on the bureau, spoke so of John--of what everything about him meant to her--about what going away from him would mean. She flung herself on her knees beside the narrow iron cot in the corner, her arms out over the pillow where his head rested. "Oh, God, please make it all come straight and right!" she begged. "I don't suppose I did what I ought to, and maybe I'm not now, but please do let things come out the way they should! And if you can't make us both happy, make John--but--oh, God, please try to tuck me in too--I do want to be happy so!" She knelt there a little longer, with her arms thrown out over the pillow. Saying her prayers always comforted her. She waited till she was quieter. Then she rose resolutely and dried her eyes, and went downstairs again, to make her report. She found that Clarence was gone. "I got rid of him," John explained serenely to her questioning glance. "You didn't need him particularly, did you, kiddie?" Joy lifted her eyebrows. "Not particularly," she replied, "but I should have liked to say good-night to him." "I felt exactly that way myself," responded John cheerfully, "so I did. I was like the man in the Ibsen parody, who said, 'I will not only make him _feel_, but be at home!'" He paused a moment, and looked graver. "Come here, kiddie," he said. Joy had been standing just inside the door all this time, on tiptoe for flight. She came slowly over in response to his beckoning hand, and he drew her down to a stool beside him, keeping his arm around her. "Little girl," he said, "you're young, and you're inexperienced, and I don't want to see you let Rutherford go too far. I'd rather you didn't take part in this affair he's getting up." Joy started back from his encircling arm, and looked at him reproachfully. "Oh, John! Why, I want to _dreadfully!_" "It isn't that I want to take any pleasure away from you," he explained. "It's simply that the opera would of necessity throw you into closer contact with Clarence--and I don't think you quite understand what Clarence is. He is very attractive, but, as I have told you before, he is not a man I would trust. A man who goes as deliberately about making women in love with him as he does, with a frank admission to other men that he collects them, isn't a man I want you to have much to do with." Joy moved away from the arm entirely. She felt hurt. "In other words, you're afraid he'll toy with my young affections?" she answered flippantly. "Very well--let him try! Goodness knows he's labeled loudly enough. Every time he comes within a mile somebody says that about him. Everything about him says it for itself, for the matter of that. It isn't any secret. Let him toy! It amuses him and doesn't hurt me."