“Do you think they have such a hard time?”

“I know they do,” said Ellen.  “I think I ate the knowledge along with my first daily bread.”

Robert Lloyd looked down at the light, girlish figure on his arm, and again the resolution that he would not talk on such topics with a young girl like this came over him.  He felt a reluctance to do so which was quite apart from his masculine scorn of a girl’s opinion on such matters.  Somehow he did not wish to place Ellen Brewster on the same level of argument on which another man might have stood.  He felt a jealousy of doing so.  She seemed more within his reach, and infinitely more for his pleasure, where she was.  He looked admiringly down at her fair face fixed on his with a serious, intent expression.  He was quite ready to admit that he might fall in love with her.  He was quite ready to ask now why he should not.  She was a beautiful girl, an uncommon girl.  She was going to be thoroughly educated.  It would probably be quite possible to divorce her entirely from her surroundings.  He shuddered when he thought of her mother and aunt, but, after all, a man, if he were firm, need not marry the mother or aunt.  And all this was in spite of a resolution which he had formed on due consideration after his last call upon Ellen.  He had said to himself that it would not in any case be wise, that he had better not see more of her than he could help.  Instead of going to see her, he had gone riding with Maud Hemingway, who lived near his uncle’s, in an old Colonial house which had belonged to her great-grandfather.  The girl was a good comrade, so good a comrade that she shunted, as it were, love with flings of ready speech and friendly greeting, and tennis-rackets and riding-whips and foils.  Robert had been teaching Maud to fence, and she had fenced too well.  Still, Robert had said to himself that he might some day fall in love with her and marry her.  He charged his memory with the fact that this was a much more rational course than visiting a girl like Ellen Brewster, so he stayed away in spite of involuntary turnings of his thoughts in that direction.  However, now when the opportunity had seemed to be fairly forced upon him, what was he to do?  He felt that he was stirred as he had never been before.  The girl’s very soul seemed to meet his when she looked up at him with those serious blue eyes of hers.  He knew that there had never been any like her for him, but he felt as if in another minute, if they did not drop topics which he might as well have discussed with another man, this butterfly of femininity which so delighted him would be beyond his hand.  He wanted to keep her to her rose.

“But the knowledge must not imbitter your life,” he said.  “It is not for a little, delicate girl to worry herself over the problems which are too much for men.”

In spite of himself a tenderness had come into his voice.  Ellen looked down and away from him.  She trembled.