"The bets at the club are two to one against my lasting the year, Dodo!"
"Then take up the bet!"
"Why, that's an idea!" he said, with a chuckle.
He considered more profoundly, his arm still on her shoulder; but there was in it no acquiring touch, only a clinging—the clinging of a weak hand groping for companionship.
"I suppose I'm a lonely cuss at bottom," he said slowly, nor did she follow his thought.
"Anything I can do I'll do," she urged. "It'll be my fight too! Come to me, call me night or day, when you need me—when things are getting too much for you! I'll come any time!"
"You can't!"
"I can!" she cried defiantly. "What do I care what is said, if I know and you know that all is right! Thank God, I'm alone! I have no one to whom it matters what the world says. I'm only a waif, a drifter!"
"Drifters both!" he said solemnly.
She stopped a moment, struck by the idea, feeling their mutual clinging, and the incomprehensible, unseen winds of the night sweeping about them and carrying them—whither?