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"I just happened to see you going by," she said, and then, with an astounding perfection of seriousness, she added the question: "Did youyou, Noble?"

He leaned, drooping, upon the gatepost, seeatepost need not have been surprised if Noble had knelt to it

"Why, no," he said hoarsely "No, I don't have to be back at the office any particular time No"

"I just wanted to ask you----" She hesitated "Well, it really doesn't a so important I couldn't have spoken to you about it some other time"

"Well," said Noble, and then on the spur of the ht not be any other time"

"How do youaway" This was true; nevertheless, it was the first ti away," he repeated in a murmur "From this old town"

A shadoeet reproach caood, 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----"

Hereseo--any day! Just as it happens to strike me"

"But where to, Noble?"

"I don't----Well, maybe to China"

"China!" she cried in as in China," he said "A white et 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 his; she was born that way, and no punishan, but he stopped with this beginning, his voice see 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"