This was to be our last night at Aosta, perhaps our last night together, for the Boy’s plans kept his name company in some secret “hidie hole” of his mind.  As, for the third time, we dined on the loggia, before the rising of the moon, we drifted into talk of intimate things.  It was I who began it.  I harked back to the broken conversation which had first made us friends, and to his chance sketch of Helen Blantock and her type.  In that connection, I ventured to bring up the subject of his sister.

“What you said about her disillusionment interested me very much,” I told him.  “You see, I’ve just come through an experience something like it myself, do you mind talking about her?”

“Not in this place—­and this mood—­and to you,” he answered.  “But first—­what disillusioned you?”

“Disappointment in someone I cared for,—­and believed in.”

“It was the same with—­my sister.”

“Poor Princess.”

“Yes, poor Princess.  Was it—­a man friend who disappointed you?”

“A woman.  The old story.  As a matter of fact, she threw me over because another fellow had a lot more money than I.”

“Horrid creature.”

“Oh, just an ordinary, conventional, well brought up girl.  Now you see I have as much right to a grudge against women, as your sister the Princess has against men.”

“But I don’t believe the girl could have been as cruel to you, as this man I’m thinking of was to—­her.  They’d known each other for years, since childhood.  He used to call her his ‘little sweetheart’ when she was ten and he was fifteen.  How was she to dream that even when he was a boy, he didn’t really like her better than other little girls, that already he was making calculations about her money?  She thought he was different from the others, that he cared for herself.  They were engaged, the bridesmaids asked, the trousseau ready, the invitations out for the wedding, and then—­one night she overheard a conversation between him and a cousin of his, who was to be one of her bridesmaids.  Only a few words—­but they told everything.  It was the other girl he loved, and had always loved.  But he was poor, and so—­well, you can guess the rest.  My sister broke off her engagement the next day, though the man went on his knees to her, and vowed he had been mad.  Then she left home at once, and soon she was taken very ill.”

“She loved that worthless scoundrel so much?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think she knows.  It was the destruction of an ideal which was terrible.  She had clung to it.  She had said to herself:  ’Many men may be false, and mercenary, and unscrupulous, but this one is true.’  Suddenly, he had ceased to exist for her.  She stood alone in the world—­in the dark.”

“Except for you.”

“Except for me, and a few friends,—­one girl especially, who was heavenly to her.  But the dearest girl friend can’t make up for the loss of trust in a lover.”