AFTER this they had the many talks which they had promised themselves, and she told him the little things about John Baltazar which he had craved to learn. And the young man told her of his ambitions and his hopes and his young despairs. The last mainly concerned one Dorothy Mackworth, a Warwickshire divinity in a silk tennis sweater and tam-o’-shanter, whose only imperfection, if the word could be applied to tragic misfortune, was her domination by some diabolic sorcery which made her look more kindly on the black Leopold, his brother, than on himself. Her age? Seventeen. “You poor babies,” thought Marcelle. Once she said: “Why worry? You can find a thousand little Dorothys in a week if you look for them—all a-growing and a-blowing, with never a wicked spell on them at all.” “You are wrong,” he replied. “One can find thousands of Susans and Janes and Gertrudes—all very charming girls, I admit; but there’s only one Dorothy. She’s very remarkable. She has an intellect. She has a distracting quality, something uncanny, you know, in her perceptions and intuitions. I’m dead serious, Marcelle, believe me——” She let him talk his heart out. Her soul, dry and athirst, drank in his boy’s freshness—how greedily she scarcely realized. In her character of nurse she had acted as Mother Confessor to many a poor lonely wretch; but in every case she had felt it was to the nun-descended uniform she wore, to its subconsciously recognized sanctity, and not to the mere kindly woman beneath, that she owed the appeal or the revelation. But now to young Godfrey Baltazar she was intensely, materially woman. Foolishly woman in her unconfessed craving to learn the details of his life and character and outlook on the world. Once he checked an egotistic exposition. “Look here,” he said, struck by a sudden qualm, “I’m always holding forth about myself—what about you?” “There’s nothing about me. I’m just a nurse. A nurse is far too busy and remote from outside things to be anything else than a nurse.” “But you started out as a mathematical swell at Newnham. Oh yes, you did! Men like my father don’t coach rotters—least of all women. What happened? You went in for the Tripos, of course?” She shook her head. “No, my dear. The magic had gone out of my life. I tried Newnham for half the next term—facing the music—but it was too much for me. I broke down. I had to earn my livelihood. My original idea was teaching. I gave it up. Took to nursing instead. And now you know the whole story of my life.” “I can’t understand anybody really bitten with mathematics giving it up.” She smiled. “I don’t think I was really bitten. Not like you.” Then she led him from herself to his own ambitions, on this as on other occasions. Gradually she established between them a relationship very precious. It was the aftermath of her own romance.