“Oh,” said I, “it does impress me.  Nobody has ever seemed so wise as you.  Nobody!”

“Then it’s understood that I’m a sage from the Orient.  I know the workings of the human mind.  And I tell you a profound truth:  that the only way to stop thinking of a thing is to stop thinking of it.  Now, you’re not to think of Goward and all this puppet-show again.  Not a minute.  Not an instant.  Do you hear?” He sounded quite stern, and I answered as if I had been in class.

“Yes, sir.”

“You are to think of Italy, and how blue the sea is—­and Germany, and how good the beer is—­and Charlie Ned and Lorraine, and what trumps they are.  Do you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” said I, and because I knew we were going to part and there would be nobody else to advise me in the same way, I went on in a great hurry for fear there should not be time.  “I can’t live at home even after we come back.  I could never be pointed at, like Aunt Elizabeth, and have people whisper and say I’ve had a disappointment.  I must make my own life.  I must have a profession.  Do you think I could teach?  Do you think I could learn to teach—­psychology?”

He didn’t answer for a long time, and I didn’t dare look at him, though the moon was so bright now that I could see how white his hand was, lying on his knee, and the chasing of the ring on his little finger.  It had been his mother’s engagement ring, he told me once.  But he spoke, and very gently and seriously.  “I am sure you could teach some things.  Whether psychology—­but we can talk of that later.  There’ll be lots of time.  It proves I am going over on the same steamer with Charlie Ned and Lorraine and you.”

“You are!” I cried.  “Why, I never heard of anything so—­” I couldn’t find the word for it, but everything stopped being puzzling and unhappy and looked clear and plain.

“Yes,” said he.  “It’s very convenient, isn’t it?  We can talk over your future, and you could even take a lesson or two in psychology.  But I fancy we shall have a good deal to do looking for porpoises and asking what the run is.  People are terribly busy at sea.”

Then it occurred to me that he had never been here before, and why was he here now?  “How did you happen to come?” I asked.  I suppose I really felt as if God sent him.

“Why,” said he, “why—­” Then he laughed.  “Well,” said he, “to tell the truth, I was going abroad if—­if certain things happened, and I needed to make sure.  I didn’t want to write, so I ran down to see Charlie Ned.”

“But could he tell you?” said I.  “And had they happened?”

He laughed, as if at something I needn’t share.  “No,” he said, “the things weren’t going to happen.  But I decided to go abroad.”

I was “curiouser and curiouser,” as Lorraine says.

“But,” I insisted, “what had Charles Edward to do with it?”

There were a great many pauses that night as if, I think, he didn’t know what was wise to say.  I should imagine it would always be so with psychologists.  They understand so well what effect every word will have.