I think you can't say it."  She stood up.  "Thank you for listening patiently. At least you have helped me to come to my decision. I'm going to. To-night." 

 This was too awful. He had helped her to decide to kill herself. He could not let her go that way. He stood before her and talked with all his might.  "You cannot do that. You must not. You are overstrained and excited, and it is no time to do an irrevocable thing. You must wait till you see things calmly, at least. Taking your own life is not a thing to decide on as you might decide on going to a ball. How do you know that you will not be bitterly sorry to-morrow if you do that to-night? It's throwing away the one chance a person has to make the world better and happier. That's what you're here for—not to enjoy yourself." 

 She put a quiet sentence, in that oddly buoyant voice, into the stream of his words.  "Still, you don't say I'd go to hell forever," she commented. 

 "Is that your only thought?" he demanded indignantly.  "Can't you think of what's brave and worth while—of what's decent for a big thing like a soul? A soul that's going on living to eternity—do you want to blacken that at the start? Can't you forget your little moods and your despair of the moment?" 

 "No, I can't."  The roses bobbed as she shook her head. The man, in his heart, knew how it was, and did not wonder. But he must somehow stop this determination which he had—she said—helped to form. A thought came to him; he hesitated a moment, and then broke out impetuously: "Let me do this—let me write to you; I'm not saying things straight. It's hard. I think I could write more clearly. And it's unfair not to give me a hearing. Will you promise only this, not to do it till you've read my letter?" 

 Slowly the youth, the indomitable brightness in the girl forged to the front. She looked at him with the dawn of a smile in her eyes, and he saw all at once, with a passing vision, that her eyes were very blue and that her hair was bright and light—a face vivid and responsive. 

 "Why, yes. There's no particular reason for to-night. I can wait. But I'm going home to-morrow, to my uncle's place at Forest Gate. I'll never be here again. The people I'm with are going away to live next month. I'll never see you again. You don't know my name."  She considered a moment.  "I'd rather not have you know it. You may write to—"  She laughed.  "I said I was just a date—you may write to August First, Forest Gate, Illinois. Say care of, 

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