“Nonsense! I didn’t mean that,” interrupted the young girl. “If you were a milksop, trotting along at your mother’s apron strings, I wouldn’t look at you. Indeed, I wouldn’t! I know you’re rather fast, and I like it in you. There was a little boy next to me at dinner this evening—a dear little pale-faced thing, who talked to me about Schopenhauer and Hegel, and drank five glasses of Apollinaris—I counted them. There are lots of them about nowadays—all the fittest having survived, it’s the turn of the unfit, I suppose. But I wouldn’t have you one little tiny bit better than you are. You don’t gamble, and you don’t drink, and you’re merely supposed to be fast because you’re not a bore.”
Ralston was silent, and his face turned a little pale. A violent struggle arose in his thoughts, all at once, without the slightest warning nor even the previous suspicion that it could ever arise at all.
“That’s not the risk,” continued Katharine. “Oh, no! And perhaps what I mean isn’t such a very great risk after all. I don’t believe there is any, myself—but I suppose other people might. It’s that uncle Robert might not, after all—oh, well! We won’t talk about such things. If one only takes enough for granted, one is sure to get something in the end. That isn’t exactly Schopenhauer, is it? But it’s good philosophy.”
Katharine laughed happily and looked at him. But his face was unusually grave, and he would not laugh.
“It’s too absurd that I should be telling you to take courage and be cheerful, Jack!” she said, a moment later. “I feel as though you were reproaching me with not being serious enough for the occasion. That isn’t fair. And it is serious—it is, indeed.” Her tone changed. “I’m putting my very life into your hands, dear, as I told you, because I trust you. What’s the matter, Jack? You seem to be thinking—”
“I am,” answered Ralston, rather gloomily. “I was thinking about something very, very important.”
“May I know?” asked Katharine, gently. “Is it anything you should like me to know—or to ask me about, before to-morrow?”
“To-morrow!” Ralston repeated the word in a low voice, as though he were meditating upon its meaning.
They were seated on a narrow little sofa against the lower woodwork of the carved staircase. The hall was crowded with young people coming and going between the other rooms. Katharine was leaning back, her head supported against the dark panel, her eyes apparently half closed—for she was looking down at him as he bent forward. He held one elbow on his knee and his chin rested in his hand, as he looked up sideways at her.
“Katharine”—he began, and then stopped suddenly, and she saw now that he was turning very pale, as though in fear or pain.