"My dear child, if it's saving you to bring you out here without your people knowing anything about it, and to let you be seen with him everywhere—"
"He didn't bring me. He said he wished I could come with him. And I said I wished I could. I almost asked him to take me; and he said he couldn't. Then he went off by himself. He was all right till he got to Bruges. Then he wrote and said that the beauty of it hurt him, that it was awful being here without me, and that he was coming back at the end of the week without seeing any more of it, because he couldn't bear to know what I was missing. He was going to keep the other places till we could see them together. So I wired to say I was coming, and I came."
"What did you do it for, Viola?"
"Wally, I asked myself that as soon as I got into the train. And it wasn't till I was half across the Channel that I knew why."
She stopped and stared as if at the wonder of herself explained.
"I did it to burn my boats."
I suppose I stared at that. For she expounded:
"To make it impossible to go back."
I said, "My dear child, that was very reckless of you."
She said she wanted to be reckless. I asked her if it didn't occur to her that some day she might want her boats?