"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they wouldn't take me."
"Oh? So he had money?"
"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a journey—like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that—but he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one of the pioneers of that country—one of the very first to see its possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it to me. I believe it's a good deal."
"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."
"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to realize—who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy until I was among people of my own kind."
"And how did you get there?"
She smiled faintly to herself before answering.
"I never did. There are no people of my kind."
Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance, he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.
"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"
"I should like it well enough if he did—that is, if his wife did. You see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that, but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to her—its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in a way, it's a trial to me to stay."
"Why do you stay, then?"
"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law tells me."
"I see. The law again!"
"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."
"Such as—?"
"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that loves me."
"What's her name?"
The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile and sensitive—lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the inner spirit softened them with a tremor—or it might have been a light—of gentleness.
"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection. "It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."
"Still—if I escape—I should like to know them."
"If you escape, you may be able to find out."
"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to tell me—"
Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong, but his pleasure in talking to a lady—a girl—was undeniable. Sometimes in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.
"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"
She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with which she answered him—
"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's just this: they're not very well off—so I can help. Naturally I like that."
"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it, but everybody wouldn't."
"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they shouldn't need me at all."
"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness. "That's what."
"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."
"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without you, Heaven only knows. It's curious—the effect imprisonment has on you. It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a baby. You want to be free—and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."
He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke without looking up.
"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."
"That's easy to say."
"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd go to the Argentine."
"Why not say the moon?"
"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."
"So is the Argentine—for me."
"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."
"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."
"Some of them were probably in worse."
There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.
"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.
"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little girl I was speaking of just now—whom I'm so fond of—was born there. Her father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."
He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound, just above his breath.
"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many—stranded people."
"I should be just his sort, then."
His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded him of something he had read—or heard—of the wild olive being grafted into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have chosen for a heroine—Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan possibly—or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as he fell asleep, it might be—the Wild Olive.
V