He laughed in delight at the final need.

“All of it,” declared Kenny happily, “I can teach you.”

“No,” said Joan with a definite shake of her head.  “You would kiss me.  And I would always be right even when you knew I was wrong.”

His eyes laughed at her mischievously.  But he caught her hands and pressed them to his lips.

“Listen, dear,” he pleaded.  “My world isn’t a world of social climbers or snobs or dollar-worshippers.  It’s a world of gifted men and women who haven’t time to look up your ancestors or your bank balance before they decide to be friendly and kind.  I know a poet whose mother was a gypsy, a painter who’s a baron and he says he can’t help it, a French girl who paints millionaire babies and her father was a tight-rope walker in a circus.  My world, Joan, is the happy-go-lucky Bohemia of success and the democracy of real talent.  We’re actors and painters and sculptors and writers and artists in general and all in all I think we work a little more and play a little more, enjoy a little more and suffer a little more than the rest of the world.  Once in a while to be sure a head grows a bit too big and then we all take a bop at it!  But the big thing is we’re human; just folks, as a man in the grillroom said one night.  We’re human and we’re kind.  It’s not a smart set, dear.  And it’s not an ultra-fashionable four-hundredy thing.  God forbid!  It’s the kind of Bohemia I love.  And I’m sure you’ll love it too.”

Her eyes were shining.  In the dusk her color came to him like the glimmer of a flower.

“Kenny!” she exclaimed.  “How wonderful it all is, you and all of it!  And yet if—­if I feel as I do, you must let me go for a year.  Otherwise if I lack confidence in myself—­Oh, can’t you see, Kenny, I shall be shy and frightened and always ill at ease!”

“Go!” he echoed blankly.

“Somewhere,” said Joan, “to study music and French and how to talk your kind of nonsense.  Hannah says there must be money enough in Uncle’s estate for that.”

“Where,” said Kenny, his heart cold, “would you go?”

“I thought,” said Joan demurely, “that perhaps I could study in New York where I wouldn’t be so—­lonesome.”

He caught her in his arms.

“Heart of mine!” he whispered.  “You thought of that.”

“Then,” said Joan, “I can learn something of your world before I become a part of it.  Don’t you see, Kenny?  I can look on and learn to understand it.  I should like that.  Come, painter-man!  The tea’s cold.  And it’s growing dark.  We’d better light the lamp.”

With the tea-pot singing again on the fire and the lamp lighted, Kenny, but momentarily tractable, had another interval of rebellion.  Joan, in New York, might better be his wife.  Joan, studying, might better have him near to talk his sort of nonsense, listen to her music and make love volubly in French to which she needed the practice of reply.  His plea was reckless and tender but Joan shook her head; and Kenny realized with a sigh that her preposterous notion of unfitness was strong in her mind and would not be denied.