"I'll have to write every day. You'll answer me, won't you?"
"Of course I will, you exacting boy."
In a very low voice he went on:
"I want to have you all to myself till to-morrow—till I've got to leave you. It would be heaven; but—"
Roselle Dates was of that talented community of stupid women who understand and manipulate life through their super-instinct of sex merely; who know how to take all and give nothing; suckers of life and never feeders. She looked at him and sighed and smiled, and shook her head, and touching his hand, whispered:
"But that's impossible. It isn't often a woman makes a friend like you. Let it last a little longer, there's a dear boy."
"I'm sorry," said Osborn. "I suppose we're all beasts."
She sighed again. "Every inch of life is snared, for women. In a profession like mine you watch each step. My goodness, you do! Or you'd fall into one of the traps."
"Isn't it ever worth while falling in?"
She refused to answer. Becoming suddenly capricious with the caprice that is the armour of her kind, she wished to be taken home. After he had left her, he walked the streets moodily for an hour before going in himself.