He gazed at her in perplexity and then laughed.  “You’re just as real as ever, aren’t you?”

“Real!  I should hope so.  But you aren’t.  The first time I see you, you’re a woodland philosopher, living on berries and preaching in the wilderness; the second time, you’re merely a caged enthusiast without a mission; the third time you’re Haroun al Raschid, smoking cigarettes at Finnegan’s.  I wonder what you’re going to be next.”

He felt the light sting of irony, but her humor disarmed him.

“I’m not going to be anything else,” he said slowly.  “And I’m not an enthusiast without a mission.  I may have been then, but I’m not now.  You don’t just understand.  I’m pretty busy in a way, learning the ropes, business, social and all the rest of them, but I’m not idle.  I’m learning something all the time, Una, and I’m going to try to help—­I can, too.”

“Do you really mean that?” she asked incredulously when he paused.

“Yes, I mean it.  I want to try to help right away, if you’ll let me.  See here, Una—­” He leaned across the table in a sudden burst of enthusiasm.  “I don’t want you to think that I’ve ever said anything I don’t mean.  I said up there at Horsham Manor that I wanted to help you in your work, and I’m going to prove it to you that whatever your doubts of me I haven’t changed my purposes.  You didn’t believe me when I said I’d been hunting for you.  You don’t have to, if you don’t want to, but you’ll have to believe me now when I tell you that I want to set aside a fund for you to use—­to administer yourself.  Oh, you needn’t be surprised.  I’ve got more money than I know what to do with.  It’s rotting in a bank—­piling up.  I don’t want it.  I don’t need it, and I want you to take some of it right away and put it where it will do the most good.  You’ve got to take it—­you’ve got to, if only to prove that you don’t believe me insincere.  I’m going to start giving money now and if you don’t help me I’ll have to ask somebody else.  I’d rather have you do it, personally, than work through some big charity organization, that would spend seven or eight dollars, in overhead charges, before they could distribute one.  That kind of charity is all very well and does fine work, I suppose, but I want to feel that I’m helping personally—­directly.  I’ll want to pitch in down here some day and do what I can myself.  You’ve got to do it, Una—­let me give you some money to start with right away, won’t you?”

He paused breathless awaiting her reply.  Her face was turned toward me during the whole of Jerry’s rather long speech and I watched the play of emotion upon her features.  She had been prepared, I suppose, from the appearance of Jerry’s companions at Finnegan’s, to find her woodland idyl shattered, and she followed Jerry word by word through his boyish outburst, incredulously at first, then earnestly and then eagerly.  She had an unusually expressive countenance and the transition I observed was the more illuminating in the light of my previous knowledge of their acquaintance.  Jerry was enthroned again, panoplied in virtues.