"You don't really mean," he went on, "that you care anything about me,
like, like I have cared for you for years?"

"Oh! Alan," she said, laughing outright, "why in the name of goodness
shouldn't I care about you? I didn't say that I do, mind, but why
shouldn't I? What is the gulf between us?"

"The old one," he answered, "that between Dives and Lazarus--that
between the rich and the poor."

"Alan," said Barbara, looking down, "I don't know what has come over me,
but for some unexplained and inexplicable reason I am inclined to
give Lazarus a lead--across that gulf, the first one, I mean, not the
second!"

Like the glance which preceded it, this was a saying that even Alan
could not misunderstand. He sat himself on the log beside her, while
she, still looking down, watched him out of the corners of her eyes.
He went red, he went white, his heart beat very violently. Then he
stretched out his big brown hand and took her small white one, and as
this familiarity produced no remonstrance, let it fall, and passing his
arm about her, drew her to him and embraced her, not once, but
often, with such vigour that a squirrel which had been watching these
proceedings from a neighbouring tree, bolted round it scandalized and
was seen no more.

"I love you, I love you," he said huskily.

"So I gather," she answered in a feeble voice.

"Do you care for me?" he asked.

"It would seem that I must, Alan, otherwise I should scarcely--oh! you
foolish Alan," and heedless of her Sunday hat, which never recovered
from this encounter, but was kept as a holy relic, she let her head fall
upon his shoulder and began to cry again, this time for very happiness.

He kissed her tears away, then as he could think of nothing else to say,
asked her if she would marry him.

"It is the general sequel to this kind of thing, I believe," she
answered; "or at any rate it ought to be. But if you want a direct
answer--yes, I will, if my uncle will let me, which he won't, as you
have quarrelled with him, or at any rate two years hence, when I am five
and twenty and my own mistress; that is if we have anything to marry
on, for one must eat. At present our worldly possessions seem to consist
chiefly of a large store of mutual affection, a good stock of clothes
and one Yellow God, which after what happened last night, I do not think
you will get another chance of turning into cash."

"I must make money somehow," he said.

"Yes, Alan, but I am afrai