“Well,” said Noble, and then on the spur of the moment he continued darkly:  “There might not be any other time.”

“How do you mean, Noble?”

He smiled faintly.  “I’m thinking of going away.”  This was true; nevertheless, it was the first time he had thought of it.  “Going away,” he repeated in a murmur.  “From this old town.”

A shadowy, sweet reproach came upon Julia’s eyes.  “You mean—­for good, Noble?” she asked in a low voice, although no one knew better than she what trouble such performances often cost her, later.  “Noble, you don’t mean——­”

He made a vocal sound conveying recklessness, something resembling a reckless laugh.  “I might go—­any day!  Just as it happens to strike me.”

“But where to, Noble?”

“I don’t——­Well, maybe to China.”

“China!” she cried in amazement.  “Why, Noble Dill!”

“There’s lots of openings in China,” he said.  “A white man can get a commission in the Chinese army any day.”

“And so,” she said, “you mean you’d rather be an officer in the Chinese army than stay—­here?” With that, she bit her lip and averted her face for an instant, then turned to him again, quite calm.  Julia could not help doing these things; she was born that way, and no punishment changed her.

“Julia——­” the dazzled Noble began, but he stopped with this beginning, his voice seeming to have exhausted itself upon the name.

“When do you think you’ll start?” she asked.

His voice returned.  “I don’t know just when,” he said; and he began to feel a little too much committed to this sudden plan of departure, and to wonder how it had come about.  “I—­I haven’t set any day—­exactly.”

“Have you talked it over with your mother yet, Noble?”

“Not yet—­exactly,” he said, and was conscious of a distaste for China as something unpleasant and imminent.  “I thought I’d wait till—­till it was certain I would go.”

“When will that be, Noble?” And in spite of herself, Julia spoke in the tone of one who controls herself to ask in calmness:  “Is my name on the list for the guillotine?”

“Well,” he said, “it’ll be as soon as I’ve made up my mind to go.  I probably won’t go before then; not till I’ve made up my mind to.”

“But you might do that any day, mightn’t you?”

Noble began to feel relieved; he seemed to have hit upon a way out.  “Yes; and then I’d be gone,” he said firmly.  “But probably I wouldn’t go at all unless I decided to.”  This seemed to save him from China, and he added recklessly:  “I guess I wouldn’t be missed much around this old town if I did go.”

“Yes, you would,” Julia said quickly.  “Your family’d miss you—­and so would everybody.”

“Julia, you wouldn’t——­”

She laughed lightly.  “Of course I should, and so would papa.”

Noble released the gatepost and appeared to slant backward.  “What?”