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 to be (though this he could not suspect) the boy flung face down across the bed with his arms, like a child's, beside his head while she watched over him and dreamed.

Now, she was going away; and after he heard it, Jay avoided his father's office until the hour when he was sure to find her alone.

"You're going to New York," he said. "Did I have anything to do with it?"

She looked at him, thinking what to say. "It's better for me to be there," she told him, at last.

"Do you want to go to New York?"

"I want to go."

He seized both her hands, one hand to each of his, thrusting his fingers between hers, pressing his palms to hers. He drew her toward him, so. Then his hands would release her; his hands would slip over her shoulders and about her little body. He started to draw his hands away but hers clung to his; she fought more than his handclasp but she clung to his clasp; she clung to it, so!

"I don't want you to go!" he told her.

"I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"

"To go?"

"This!" she cried, and tore her hands from him. So he stood back from her, as he had by the northern road under the stars where the dead danced; under the stars not so stale now to Lida, who would soon send for him. There was Lida. He remembered Lida and turned away.

To leave the city, where she had dwelt for nearly three years, was less, far less to Ellen than to forsake the lake