"Forgotten!" he exclaimed. "I'm just beginning to realize it." "I was afraid it might come back to you as a shock, Monte," she said. "But it is very convenient--at just this time." "I don't know what I should have done without it," he nodded. "It certainly gives a man a comfortable feeling to know--well, just to know there is some one around." "I'm glad if I've been able to do anything." "It's a whole lot just having you here," he assured her. It changed the whole character of this room, for one thing. It ceased to be merely a hotel room--merely number fifty-four attached with a big brass star to a key. It was more like a room in the Hotel des Roses, which was the nearest to home of any place Monte had found in a decade. It was as if when she came in she completely refurnished it with little things with which he was familiar. Edhart always used to place flowers in his apartment; and it was like that. "The only bother with the arrangement," he said, looking serious, "is that it takes your time. Ought n't you to be at Julien's this morning?" She had forgotten about Julien's. Yet for the last two years it had been the very center other own individual life. Now the crowded studio, the smell of turpentine, the odd cosmopolitan gathering of fellow students, the little pangs following the bitter criticisms of the master, receded into the background until they became as a dream of long ago. "I don't think I shall ever go to Julien's again," she answered. "But look here--that won't do," he objected. "If I'm to interfere with all your plans--" "It isn't that, Monte," she assured him. "Ever since I came back this last time, I knew I did n't belong there. When Aunt Kitty was alive it was all the opportunity I had; but now--" She paused. "Well?" "I have my hands full with you until you get out again," she answered lightly. "That's what I object to," he said; "If being engaged is going to pin you down, then I don't think you ought to be engaged. You've had enough of that in your life." The curious feature of her present position was that she had no sense