Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/157

 "But everyone calls you that. I want a name of my own, too."

"It doesn't sound the same—when you say it."

"How do I say it?" She tried it in varying inflections: "Don? Don. Don!"

"It's your voice. It's so" He gulped.

"Why, I haven't a pretty voice, do you think?"

"I can hear it when I'm alone. I can see you, any time, by just closing my eyes."

"Really! Try it now. Close them."

"No." He shook his head, his eyes fastened on her hungrily. "I want to see you really. I shall be alone again soon enough."

"Why—why are you so much alone?"

"Because I can . . . think of you."

"Don!" she said earnestly. "You mustn't do it. I—you"

"After you went away from Coulton, I was so lonely I used to go to the ravine to meet you and—and here, when I was at college, before you came, I had you all the time." She reached out her hand on the warm impulse of pity, and he took it in both his. "Now I shall have this to remember—the softness."

"Oh, Don, dear," she pleaded, bending down to him. "If I disappoint you! If I" He played with her fingers, watching them whiten and dimple. "You never will again. I know you now. You never will."

"But when I go away?"

"You'll come back."

She caught his wrist and shook it, as if to wake