"Well, we won't. I'll tell you one thing, though; we have got to start a correspondence. You can spare a few ideas from your Yankees, I hope. I shall simply die on the wooden pavements if I can't at least hear from you occasionally."
"Certainly; I should like nothing better. I'll even go so far as to be the first to write, if you like, and that's a perfectly tremendous concession, as I'm the worst letter writer that ever lived."
So there the matter was left. Harry left Harrow for good at Easter, and spent one last golden month in London, seeing Beatrice almost every day and being an unalloyed joy and comfort to his uncle and aunt. In May he took a short trip through Spain with Sir Giles; it was a country neither of them had visited before, and they had planned a trip there for years. Uncle Giles worked double time for a fortnight in order to be able to leave with a clear conscience, but he found the reward well worth the labor.
They parted at Madrid, the plan being for Harry to sail for New York from Gibraltar, arriving in time to take his final examinations in New Haven in June.
There were tears in Sir Giles' kind blue eyes as he bade Harry good-by, and Harry saw them and knew why they were there. Suddenly he felt his own fill.
"I don't want to go very much, Uncle Giles," he said in a low voice. "Now that it comes to the point, I don't like it much. You've all been so wonderful to me.... It's not a question of what I want to do, though. It's just what's got to be done."
"Yes," said his uncle; "I know. You're quite right about it. It's the only thing to do. But perhaps you won't mind my saying I'm glad, in a way, that you find it hard?"
"Thank you; that helps, too. There's more that comes into it, though; more than what we have talked over together so often.... I mean—"
"James?"
"Yes," said Harry, "that's it."