"I am not," she insisted, "the least bit the kind of girl you ought to care for. It'll be five years at the very least before you can marry, and in five years' time I shall have written books, and--well, I hope I shall have done something worth while. Do you suppose I could be satisfied to give it all up? I know myself, I couldn't do it. Or, if I did do it, I should be wretched--and make you wretched too." "But why should you give it all up?" he said miserably. "Don't you think I should be interested in it? Haven't I been interested here--have you found me so wooden? I don't know much about it, but Oh, my dear, I'm so fond of you! Whatever interested _you_ would be bound to interest _me_. You could write novels as my wife--I'd never put any difficulties in your way, heaven knows I wouldn't!" She shook her head. "You think all that now, but you'd know better then. You won't want a wife to write novels--you'll want one to bake the bread and feed the chickens and make herself useful. You'll want the domesticated article--and I'm an artist. I should be an encumbrance, not a wife. Besides, I should hate it all. Oh, I know I'm hurting you, but it's true! I should bore myself to death. To write, I need to live among men and women, to live in London, Paris, among other writers. I want to see pictures, and hear music--real music, not Verdi and that kind of treacle--and be in the movement. Perhaps by the time you wanted me to come to you I _should_ be in the movement--five years is a long while, and I'm going to work hard. And you fancy I could turn my back on it all! Oh, Mr. Humphreys, don't let us talk about it any more!" Trying to steady his voice, the young man asked: "May I write to you sometimes, as a friend?" "I think you had better not," she said, though her heart had jumped at the suggestion. "I haven't any people who'd care much about hearing from me," he pleaded; "I shall be pretty humped over there at the start. I'd promise faithfully not to--er--I'd write to you just as I might write to any other chum, if I had one." "Very well," she assented. "Write to me like that and I'll answer." * * * * *