Luncheon pursued its delicious but somewhat leisurely way. Mr. Hazlitt lit a cigar and sent the coffee back to be heated. It was a pleasant moment. Lita was conscious that he was treating her more as an equal companion than ever before. She was enjoying herself, and yet in the back of her mind was a distressing awareness that time was passing and she ought to be getting back to school to her mother. "The truth is," her father was saying, "that as one gets older one loses the power, or perhaps the wish, to make new friends; and one clings to the old ties. I hope you will arrange eventually, when you are twenty-one, to spend at least half the year with me. I shall be in a position then to make some long expeditions--China and Patagonia, and I should like you to go with me." Lita's imagination took fire, but she said loyally, "But how about mother, Pat? I suppose she's lonely too." Mr. Hazlitt laughed shortly. "Your mother," he said, "unless she has changed very much, probably does not spend one waking hour in the twenty-four alone. I doubt if she ever loses the power of making new friends--quite indiscriminately. And, after all, I am only asking for half your time." "But, father, suppose I should marry?" Her father looked at her with startled eyes, as if she had suggested something unnatural and wrong. "Marry!" he said. "I hope you have no such idea in your head." She had not. Indeed her immunity from the crushes which occupied so much of the time and attention of her schoolmates occasioned her some concern. She feared her nature was a cold one. She disclaimed the idea of marriage, except as she had observed it in common. "People do, you know," she said. "A good many would be wiser if they didn't," said her father. "I am particularly opposed to young marriages." He and her mother had married when they were young. Presently she was obliged to tell him that she must go. He did not gainsay her decision, but she saw he took it as meaning that she had not really enjoyed herself. Yet when she tried to say she had--that she was sorry to leave him--it kept sounding as if she were saying it was a bore to go back and walk to the station with her mother. If only she could be loyal to one parent without being disloyal to the other! She was a little bit late at the school. Her mother was just starting without her. "Oh, I understand," she said, without listening to Lita's explanation. "Very natural. You were enjoying yourself; you don't need to explain." Lita saw she was hurt but had determined to be nice about it. They started on their walk. First they crossed the athletic fields; then their way would lie through the school woods, and then across stony fields, and then they would come out on the macadam road to the station--about three miles across country.