"I just happened to see you going by," she said, and then, with an astounding perfection of seriousness, she added the question: "Did you mind my calling to you and stopping you, Noble?"
He leaned, drooping, upon the gatepost, seeming to yearn toward it; his expression was such that this gatepost need not have been surprised if Noble had knelt to it.
"Why, no," he said hoarsely. "No, I don't have to be back at the office any particular time. No."
"I just wanted to ask you----" She hesitated. "Well, it really doesn't amount to anything--it's nothing so important I couldn't have spoken to you about it some other time."
"Well," said Noble, and then on the spur of the moment he continued darkly: "There might not be any other time."
"How do you mean, Noble?"
He smiled faintly. "I'm thinking of going away." This was true; nevertheless, it was the first time he had thought of it. "Going away," he repeated in a murmur. "From this old town."
A shadowy, sweet reproach came upon Julia's eyes. "You mean--for good, Noble?" she asked in a low voice, although no one knew better than she what trouble such performances often cost her, later. "Noble, you don't mean----"
He made a vocal sound conveying recklessness, something resembling a reckless laugh. "I might go--any day! Just as it happens to strike me."
"But where to, Noble?"
"I don't----Well, maybe to China."
"China!" she cried in amazement. "Why, Noble Dill!"
"There's lots of openings in China," he said. "A white man can get a commission in the Chinese army any day."
"And so," she said, "you mean you'd rather be an officer in the Chinese army than stay--here?" With that, she bit her lip and averted her face for an instant, then turned to him again, quite calm. Julia could not help doing these things; she was born that way, and no punishment changed her.
"Julia----" the dazzled Noble began, but he stopped with this beginning, his voice seeming to have exhausted itself upon the name.
"When do you think you'll start?" she asked.
His voice returned. "I don't know just when," he said; and he began to feel a little too much committed to this sudden plan of departure, and to wonder how it had come about. "I--I haven't set any day--exactly."