“Why do you stay, then?”

“For one reason, because I can’t help myself.  I have to do what the law tells me.”

“I see.  The law again!”

“Yes; the law again.  But I’ve other reasons besides that.”

“Such as—?”

“Well, I’m very fond of their little girl, for one thing.  She’s the greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that loves me.”

“What’s her name?”

The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work.  Ford followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting of her lips into a curve of determination.  They were handsome lips, mobile and sensitive—­lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the inner spirit softened them with a tremor—­or it might have been a light—­of gentleness.

“It isn’t worth while to tell you that,” she said, after long reflection.  “It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all.”

“Still—­if I escape—­I should like to know them.”

“If you escape, you may be able to find out.”

“Oh, well,” he said, with assumed indifference, “since you don’t want to tell me—­”

Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect.  Not only was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong, but his pleasure in talking to a lady—­a girl—­was undeniable.  Sometimes in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was “not his type of girl”; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any one.  If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.

“So the little girl is one reason for your staying here.  What’s another?”

She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with which she answered him—­

“I don’t know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well.  It’s just this:  they’re not very well off—­so I can help.  Naturally I like that.”

“You can help by footing the bills.  That’s all very fine if you enjoy it, but everybody wouldn’t.”

“They would if they were in my position,” she insisted.  “When you can help in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one.  I’d rather that people needed me, even if they didn’t want me, than that they shouldn’t need me at all.”

“They need your money,” he declared, with a young man’s outspokenness.  “That’s what.”

“But that’s something, isn’t it?  When you’ve no place in the world you’re glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it.  My guardian and his wife mayn’t care much to have me, but it’s some satisfaction to know that they’d get along much worse if I weren’t here.”