Even before you do, perhaps." "That arrangement suits me," Russell returned, and his voice held no trace of jocularity: he had become serious.

"It suits me better if you're enough in earnest to mean that I can come--oh, not whenever I want to; I don't expect so much!--but if you mean that I can see you pretty often." "Of course I'm in earnest," she said.

"But before I say you can come 'pretty often,' I'd like to know how much of my time you'd need if you did come 'whenever you want to'; and of course you wouldn't dare make any answer to that question except one.

Wouldn't you let me have Thursdays out ?" "No, no," he protested.

"I want to know.