“I have n’t felt it so, since I met you,” said Joyce.
“But you won’t have even me, any more. I wish I could help you.”
“Help me? Why, you ‘ve raised me out of the gutter, Madame Latour.”
“Oh, don’t call me ‘Madame Latour,’” she said, “I don’t call you ‘Mr. Joyce.’ I am ‘Yvonne’ to all my friends. You used to call me ‘Yvonne’ once.”
“You were not my benefactress then,” said Joyce.
“Please don’t call me hard names,” she returned whimsically, “or I shall be afraid of you, as I used to be.”
“Afraid of me?” echoed Joyce.
“Yes. Weren’t you dreadfully clever? I was always afraid you would think me silly. And then, often I could not quite understand what you were saying—how much you meant of what you said. Don’t you see?”
“I see I must have been insufferable,” he replied. “It makes what you are to me now all the more beautiful. But I scarcely dare call you 'Yvonne’—don’t you understand? But it would gladden me to write it. May I write to you on my pilgrimage?”
“It would be so good of you, if you would,” she answered eagerly. “I do love people to write to me.”