and the family what sort of stuff I'm made of. I'm going to prove that women aren't weak and vacillating. Why, I haven't been even a year here yet. I couldn't run to cover the first time I found myself out of a position. Besides the first position wasn't one I could exhibit to the family. I must stay. I'm just as anxious to prove myself a success as a young man whose family doesn't think he's got it in him. Please understand, and help me, Bob."
"Shall we see each other sometimes?" he queried.
"It's no use. It doesn't help," I said. "I do care for you, somehow, and seeing you seems to make foggy what was so clear and crystal, as if I were looking at it through a mist. I mean sitting here with you makes me feel—makes me forget what I marched for day before yesterday. I was so full of it—of all it meant and stood for—and now No, Bob. No. You must let me work these things out alone. I shall never be satisfied now until I do."
He left me at my door. There was a light in the windows upstairs, and I knew that Esther had come home. Bob left me with just an ordinary hand-shake. It hurt somehow—that formal little ceremony from him. It hurt, too, afterward to stand in the doorway and watch him walking away. It hurt to hear the sound of his steady step growing fainter and fainter. O Bob, you might have turned around and waved!
I went upstairs. "Hello," said Esther. "Where have you been?" and I told her to dinner with a man from home. A little later I announced to her that I
