“I’ll meet you as often as you want.  And I’ll be your friend as long as you prove to me I can be of any help, or pleasure, or good to you.”

“Hot dog, but you’re taking some job, Daren.  Won’t it be just spiffy?  We’ll meet here, afternoons, and evenings when mother’s out.  She’s nutty on bridge.  She makes me promise I won’t leave the yard.  So I’ll not have to lie to meet you....  Daren, that day at Helen’s, the minute I saw you I knew you were going to have something to do with my future.”

“Bessy, a little while ago I made sure you had no romance in you,” replied Lane, with a smile.  “Now as we’ve gotten serious, let’s think hard about the future.  What do you want most?  Do you care for study, for books?  Have you any gift for music?  Do you ever think of fitting yourself for useful work?...  Or is your mind full of this jazz stuff?  Do you just want to go from day to day, like a butterfly from flower to flower?  Just this boy and that one—­not caring much which—­all this frivolity you hinted of, and worse, living this precious time of your youth all for excitement?  What is it you want most?”

She responded with a thoughtfulness that inspired Lane’s hope for her.  This girl could be reached.  She was like Lorna in many ways, but different in mentality.  Bessy watched the gyrations of her shapely little foot.  She could not keep still even in abstraction.

“A girl must have a good time,” she replied presently.  “I’ve done things I hated because I couldn’t bear to be left out of the fun....  But I like most to read and dream.  Music makes me strange inside, and to want to do great things.  Only there are no great things to do.  I’ve never been nutty about a career, like Helen is.  And I always hated work....  I guess—­to tell on the level—­what I want most is to be loved.”

With that she raised her eyes to Lane’s.  He tried to read her mind, and realized that if he failed it was not because she was not baring it.  Dropping his own gaze, he pondered.  The girl’s response to his earnestness was intensely thought-provoking.  No matter how immodestly she was dressed, or what she had confessed to, or whether she had really expected and desired dalliance on his part—­here was the truth as to her hidden yearning.  The seething and terrible Renaissance of the modern girl seemed remarkably exemplified in Bessy Bell, yet underneath it all hid the fundamental instinct of all women of all ages.  Bessy wanted most to be loved.  Was that the secret of her departure from the old-fashioned canons of modesty and reserve?

“Bessy,” went on Lane, presently.  “I’ve heard my sister speak of Rose Clymer.  Is she a friend of yours, too?”

“You bet.  And she’s the square kid.”

“Lorna told me she’d been expelled from school.”

“Yes.  She refused to tattle.”

“Tattle what?”

“I wrote some verses which one of the girls copied.  Miss Hill found them and raised the roof.  She kept us all in after school.  She let some of the girls off.  But she expelled Rose and sent me home.  Then she called on mama.  I don’t know what she said, but mama didn’t let me go back.  I’ve had a hateful old tutor for a month.  In the fall I’m going to private school.”