Miss Cuyler’s face was still lit with pleasure at his good fortune, but her smile was less spontaneous than it had been.  “That will be very nice.  I quite envy you,” she said.  “I suppose you know about his sister?”

“The Honorable Evelyn?” he asked.  “Yes; he used to have a photograph of her, and I saw some others the other day in a shop-window on Broadway.”

“She is a very nice girl,” Miss Cuyler said, thoughtfully.  “I wonder how you two will get along?” and then she added, as if with sudden compunction, “but I am sure you will like her very much.  She is very clever, besides.”

“I don’t know how a professional beauty will wear if one sees her every day at breakfast,” he said.  “One always associates them with functions and varnishing days and lawn-parties.  You will write to me, will you not?” he added.

“That sounds,” she said, “as though you meant to be gone such a very long time.”

He turned one of the ornaments on the mantel with his fingers, and looked at it curiously.  “It depends,” he said, slowly—­“it depends on so many things.  No,” he went on, looking at her; “it does not depend on many things; just on one.”

Miss Cuyler looked up at him questioningly, and then down again very quickly, and reached meaninglessly for the book beside her.  She saw something in his face and in the rigidity of his position that made her breathe more rapidly.  She had not been afraid of this from him, because she had always taken the attitude towards him of a very dear friend and of one who was older, not in years, but in experience of the world, for she had lived abroad while he had gone from the university to the West, which he had made his own, in books.  They were both very young.

She did not want him to say anything.  She could only answer him in one way, and in a way that would hurt and give pain to them both.  She had hoped he could remain just as he was, a very dear friend, with a suggestion sometimes in the background of his becoming something more.  She was, of course, too experienced to believe in a long platonic friendship.

Uppermost in her mind was the thought that, no matter what he urged, she must remember that she wanted to be free, to live her own life, to fill her own sphere of usefulness, and she must not let him tempt her to forget this.  She had next to consider him, and that she must be hard and keep him from speaking at all; and this was very difficult, for she cared for him very dearly.  She strengthened her determination by thinking of his going away, and of how glad she would be when he had gone that she had committed herself to nothing.  This absence would be a test for both of them; it could not have been better had it been arranged on purpose.  She had ideas of what she could best do for those around her, and she must not be controlled and curbed, no matter how strongly she might think she wished it.  She must not give way to the temptation of the moment, or to a passing