But Marjorie ignored it and asked questions about Linnet and her home on shipboard.

“Have I changed, Marjorie?”

“No,” she said.  “You cannot change for the better, so why should you change at all?”

“I don’t like that,” he returned seriously; “it is rather hard to attain to perfection before one is twenty-one.  I shall have nothing to strive for.  Don’t you know the artist who did kill himself, or wanted to, because he had done his best?”

“You are perfect as a boy—­I mean, there is all manhood left to you,” she answered very gravely.

He colored again and his blue eyes grew as cold as steel.  Had he come to her to-night in the storm to have his youth thrown up at him?

“Marjorie, if that is all you have to say to me, I think I might better go.”

“O, Morris, don’t be angry, don’t be angry!” she pleaded.  “How can I look up to somebody who was born on my birthday,” she added merrily.

“I don’t want you to look up to me; but that is different from looking down.  You want me to tarry at Jericho, I suppose,” he said, rubbing his smooth chin.

“I want you not to be nonsensical,” she replied energetically.

How that tiny box burned in his pocket!  Should he toss it away, that circlet of gold with Semper fidelis engraved within it?  How he used to write on his slate:  “Morris Kemlo, Semper fidelis” and she had never once scorned it, but had written her own name with the same motto beneath it.  But she had given it a higher significance than he had given it; she had never once thought of it in connection with any human love.

“How often do you write to Hollis?” he inquired at last.

“I do not write to him at all,” she answered.

“Why not?  Has something happened?” he said, eagerly.

“I suppose so.”

“Don’t you want to tell me?  Does it trouble you?”

“Yes, I want to tell you, I do not think that it troubles me now.  He has never—­answered my last letter.”

“Did you quarrel with him?”

“Oh, no.  I may have displeased him, but I have no idea how I did it.”

She spoke very easily, not flushing at all, meeting his eyes frankly; she was concealing nothing, there was nothing to be concealed.  Marjorie was a little girl still.  Was he glad or sorry?  Would he find her grown up when he came back next time?

“Do you like school as well as you thought you would?” he asked, with a change of tone.

He would not be “nonsensical” any longer.

“Better!  A great deal better,” she said, enthusiastically.

“What are you getting ready for?”

“Semper fiddelis.  Don’t you remember our motto?  I am getting ready to be always faithful.  There’s so much to be faithful in, Morris.  I am learning new things every day.”

He had no reply at hand.  How that innocent ring burned in his pocket!  And he had thought she would accept that motto from him.