Dick snatched at the mug none too politely.
“I say, you are a trump!” he remarked with such fervor, however, that any girl would have forgiven him.
Then Barbara sat down beside him on the stone ledge and after seeing that he had put on the overcoat, watched him drink the coffee. She even added two rolls for his refreshment from the depth of her pocket.
“I made the coffee for you myself. I think it rather good of me,” she remarked placidly. “The other girls are lying down. But I had a fancy to see the dawn over Paris myself and I thought if I brought you a present you would not send me away.”
Dick smiled, for the dawn had broken when Barbara came. From their tall roof they had a marvelous view of the city and the long line of beautiful bridges crossing the Seine. And there, not far away, looking as if she were built half upon the water and half upon land, the Church of Notre Dame.
A sudden glory of red and gold bathed its two perfect towers and the cross above. Slipping down between the grinning gargoyles along its sides it dipped into the river below. In another direction Montmartre was shimmering like a rainbow, steeped in the colors and the glories of romance.
Barbara shivered over the strange beauty after the excitement of the night before. And although Dick was there and they were good friends, she wished that one of the girls had also been her companion. It was a time when she would have liked to put her hand inside a friend’s just for the sense of warm human companionship.
But Dick was not at the moment looking or thinking of her. It was hardly to be wondered at, the girl thought with the old grace of a smile at herself. There were so many better things to see. Yet it gave her the chance for a farewell study of him. They were to part now in a short time, for how long neither of them knew.
The next instant Barbara regretted her decision. For how wretchedly Dick Thornton was looking! Could any one believe that only a little over a year had passed since their first meeting on the March night when she had arrived so unceremoniously at his father’s house. Certainly Dick had been more than kind to her even then.
A moment later when Dick did chance to glance toward his companion she was crying hard but silently.