“I’ve got to go,” he said.  “You’ve been a darling, to me.  I’m crazy about you; I suppose you know that?”

Her slow smile drove deep dimples into her white cheeks; she looked at him warmly; and yet, had he not been too excited to note it, with an acute appraisement.  “We’re to be here another month,” she said, not answering his query, “leave me your address; you have mine.”

“Will you write?”

“Reams.  And who knows?  We may meet again some day.”

“That’s what I feel; that we haven’t met just to part.  You’re wonderful.  You’re the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met.”

“And you—­you’ve never told me anything about yourself, Osborn.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

He had Marie’s last letter in his breast-pocket at that moment, and as Roselle stirred against him he heard the slight crackling of the paper.  It dropped like a trickle of cold water into his excitement and desire.  He took Roselle’s arm lightly in his hand, and turned about.

“I must take you to tea somewhere,” he said; “where shall we go?”

In a shaded tea room, full of screens, rose-lights and china tinkling, he sat looking at her.  She was wonderful; with the rather high set of her shoulders, her white, full neck, the depth of her hair and eyes, her short and tenderly kept hands, she was romance.  You couldn’t imagine such a woman sinking into the household drudge whatever her circumstances; she stood for all that was easy and pleasant, scented and soft, in woman.  Osborn felt, as many a man has done and will do again, all memories, all fidelity slipping from him, in the lure of the hour.  Leaning forward, he said imperatively: 

“I’ll have to write every day.  You’ll answer me, won’t you?”

“Of course I will, you exacting boy.”

In a very low voice he went on: 

“I want to have you all to myself till to-morrow—­till I’ve got to leave you.  It would be heaven; but—­”

Roselle Dates was of that talented community of stupid women who understand and manipulate life through their super-instinct of sex merely; who know how to take all and give nothing; suckers of life and never feeders.  She looked at him and sighed and smiled, and shook her head, and touching his hand, whispered: 

“But that’s impossible.  It isn’t often a woman makes a friend like you.  Let it last a little longer, there’s a dear boy.”

“I’m sorry,” said Osborn.  “I suppose we’re all beasts.”

She sighed again.  “Every inch of life is snared, for women.  In a profession like mine you watch each step.  My goodness, you do!  Or you’d fall into one of the traps.”

“Isn’t it ever worth while falling in?”

She refused to answer.  Becoming suddenly capricious with the caprice that is the armour of her kind, she wished to be taken home.  After he had left her, he walked the streets moodily for an hour before going in himself.